I adore dances that are for trios rather than couples. There are so many interesting things one can do when there are three dancers in the mix rather than just two! And, of course, it helps the address the problem that historical dance tends to be imbalanced in gender, with many more women than men interested, but many of them desiring to dance in historical gender roles...though those were not always as rigid as people believe. Figures for one gentleman and two ladies go some way toward addressing this at balls.
I've written previously about G. M. S. Chivers' "Swedish" dances, trio country dances that were not actually Swedish, and the Scottish Sixdrilles, a reworking of the French quadrille to be danced by four trios rather than four couples. The Troidrilles are more in the spirit of the latter (though the name is more harmonious): a miniature "quadrille" of only three figures for four trios published in Chivers' The Dancing Master in Miniature (London, 1825). The figures are original, though very Chivers in style.
The Troidrilles were published as set to tunes -- presumably the English ones -- for the French quadrille: Pantalon, Eté, and Finale. I believe that implies that there was no specific sheet music published for them. Any quadrille set with a Finale figure of the same length (not always the case!) should work. I generally teach and dance them using the recording of Paine's 12th Set of Quadrilles found on the album Music for Quadrilles by Kevin Smith and Green Ginger, with the Finale figure edited to remove the coda.
The formation, as noted, is a square of twelve dancers, each trio consisting of one gentleman between two ladies. The head trios are the trio with their back to the music and the trio facing them. The side trios are, obviously, the other two trios. The figures were originally printed entirely in English; I've added French translations here and there for those who learned the figures in that language. General familiarity with quadrille figures and steps is assumed; I will not explain either in detail.
I'll go through the figures one by one with notes on reconstruction or performance as required.
Figure One (Tune: Pantalon) 8b + 32bx2
8b Introduction; bows and courtesies (not repeated)
4b Head trios cross over (traversez) by right hands
4b Head trios cross back (traversez) by left hands
4b Four head ladies half right and left (demi-chaîne anglaise)
4b Two gents cross over (traversez)
8b Head trios promenade halfway round to original places
4b All twelve set (balancez) in a circle
4b Each trio hands three completely round
Repeat, sides leading.
This was a straightforward figure to reconstruct and is a straightforward one to dance. The only slight awkwardness in performance is in the promenade to places. There is plenty of music -- really, too much -- but two trios are an unwieldy number of dancers to promenade inside a quadrille set. This can be improved somewhat by having the trios either link arms or assume a "Graces" position with the ladies joining inside hands behind the gentleman's back and the gentleman taking their outside hands in his. I don't object to a bit of creativity in the promenade position, as long as everyone in a trio agrees. There is ample time in the music for each trio to fully cross the set and go far enough outside it to make a big swooping turn to come back to original places facing in.
Steps
My rule of thumb for quadrilles is that for figures involving more than two dancers touching, use an appropriate number of chassé steps (one, three, or seven) concluding with jeté-assemblé. That would certainly apply to the demi-chaîne anglaise and the hands three round at the end, each of which would require three chassé, jeté-assemblé. The promenade would be done with seven chassé, jeté-assemblé. For the setting in the full circle of twelve, I default to four pas de basque.
That leaves the traversez figures.
Normally, with only two dancers who touch no more than one hand in passing (and not always that), crossing over is an opportunity to show off more creative footwork, though it is not required. One can always go back to the default three chassé, jeté-assemblé steps.
The opportunity to show off certainly applies to the traversez of the two gentlemen; some suggestions for alternate step-sequences may be found here. I don't, however, choose to apply it to the two traversez by trios figures at the beginning of the figure. Six dancers in lines passing through is just too many people in too small a space to have everyone doing different step-sequences. It might be physically possible, depending on the exact sequences, the skill of the dancers, and how much space there is for the set. But it's more likely going to be messy and look messy and possibly involve collisions. For those figures, I would go back a simple chassé, jeté-assemblé. The only exception would be in a rehearsed performance set, when it might be visually exciting to have all the dancers use a (single) different step-sequence.
I'll cover figures two and three in the following post.
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