Capering & Kickery

February 2022 Gig Calendar

As we come out of the Omicron surge, I'm starting to plan actual, in-person events for later this spring (May/June), hoping they will actually take place this year.  Meanwhile, I'm back with the California-based Historical Tea & Dance Society again this month for another Zoom lecture and will have a research trip or two as well.

Please note: the events listed below are hosted in different cities/countries in different time zones.  Please adjust for your own time zone before planning online attendance! 

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Saturday, February 19th ~ ONLINE / Connecticut-based
Cotillion Working Group Reunion Class
12:00pm-1:30pm.  Private event.

Sunday, February 20th ~ ONLINE / Connecticut-based
Dance Historian Meetup
11:00am-2:00pm.  Private event.

Saturday, February 26th ~ ONLINE / California-based
Dancing à la Carte: a Century of Dance Cards (Facebook event)
for The Historical Tea & Dance Society (Facebook page)
2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern.  "Whether plain or fancy, covered with feathers or in the shape of a fan, your dance card guided you through the ball. It ensured you didn't miss your waltz with Walter Whirligig or your quadrille with Quentin Quickstep, and then became a treasured souvenir forever after. But what were dance cards? When did they arise, what did they look like, and what can they tell us about dancing in the past?"  A popularly-oriented Zoom lecture on dance cards, primarily nineteenth century, with lots of lovely images! $5 per person, limited to fifty people.  Registration information in the sidebar here!

 

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I am available for private or group online lessons and talks via Skype or Zoom (or your videoconferencing software of choice) during the pandemic; please email me directly if you would like to schedule a private lesson or talk.  I am also available for small-group in-person dance events; fully vaccinated dancers only, please!

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Coming in March: life is full of possibilities...

The National Park Quadrille (3 of 3)

(See the first and second posts in this series for the structure of the quadrille, the "chorus" figure, and the introductions to each figure.)

Completing the National Park Quadrille, here are the third and fourth figures!

Figure 3     (4b intro, A=8b, B=8b; played 4b + AABBx4)
4b    Introduction (not repeated): gentlemen step to the center and turns to face partners, all quickly bow/courtesy, and the gentlemen return to places

4b    Head trios forward and back
4b    Head trios turn opposites by two hands
4b    All twelve join hands, forward and back
4b    All twelve take hands three in trios and circle round to places
16b  "Chorus" figure (described in detail here)

Repeat three more times (heads, sides, sides).

The National Park Quadrille (2 of 3)

(See the previous post in this series for the structure of the quadrille and the "chorus" figure.)

Going on with the actual figures of the National Park Quadrille!

Note that the first figure does not open with eight bars for the standard honors to partners and corners or opposites.  There is a specific kind of honors for the four-bar introduction to each figure.

Figure 1     (4b intro, A=8b, B=16b; played 4b + AABx4)
4b    Introduction (not repeated): gentlemen step to the center and turns to face partners, all quickly bow/courtesy, and the gentlemen return to places

4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies turn by the right hand (polka steps)
4b    Head gentlemen with left-hand ladies turn by the left hand (polka steps)
4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies promenade halfway round
4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies right and left (chaîne anglaise) to places
16b  "Chorus" figure (described in detail here)

At the end of the figure the two ladies in each trio will have exchanged places.  Head couples repeat, then side couples twice more.

The National Park Quadrille (1 of 3)

The sheet music for Clifford G. Sweet's National Park Quadrille, published in 1892, immediately intrigued me because the cover (shown at left, click to enlarge) proclaimed it "For 8 Ladies & 4 Gentlemen".  In other words, it was a trio quadrille, for four trios in a square, which is one of my favorite variant quadrille formations.  The sheet music was not accompanied by dance figures, but, happily, they are available elsewhere, though not in their original publication.  Two near-identical versions of the instructions may be found in The American Prompter and Guide to Etiquette by E. H. Kopp (Cincinnati-New York-Chicago, 1896) and a late edition of Clendenen's [Fashionable] Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette (Chicago, 1899).  Given how close the language is in the two sources, I suspect that both authors were copying from the missing original.

The National Park Quadrille is a four-figure set performed with either polka steps or plain steps ("according to the ability of the dancers") for most of the figures, with a generous amount of polka for couples thrown in during the "chorus" that ends each figure, during which the glide polka, discussed here, should be used.  This is essentially a combination of two slides of galop (one measure) plus a polka step (one measure).  If dancing the polka in the casual slide-together-slide style, which I suspect was typical at this time, it will feel much like a four-slide galop (as described here).

The most interesting element of this quadrille is the back-and-forth progression for the ladies: on each iteration of the quadrille, they change places within their trio, from left side of the gentleman to right and vice-versa.  Since the ladies on the left and right of each trio perform different figures, this prevents any imbalance in the dancing.  Each of the four figures should be performed four times, twice for the head couples and twice for the side couples.  It is noted that if this feels too long, the first three figures can be done only twice (once for heads and once for sides), but that produces a slightly strange result, with the ladies in different positions in each figure and one lady getting more polka-round opportunities than the other.

January 2022 Gig Calendar

Happy new year!  It's got to be better than the last one, right?  Did I say that last year, too?  (Nope.)

This month I'm back (online) with the California-based Historical Tea & Dance Society for another lecture and will have a research trip or two, but we're in the midst of the Omicron surge, so not much else is happening, alas.

Please note: the events listed below are hosted in different cities/countries in different time zones.  Please adjust for your own time zone before planning online attendance! 

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Saturday, January 22nd ~ ONLINE / Connecticut-based
Cotillion Working Group Reunion Class
12:00pm-1:30pm.  Private event.

Sunday, January 23rd ~ ONLINE / Connecticut-based
Dance Historian Meetup
11:00am-2:00pm.  Private event.

Saturday, January 29th ~ ONLINE / California-based
From Jane Austen to Fezziwig, and Beyond: Why the last dance of the evening became the best dance of the night.  (Facebook event)
for The Historical Tea & Dance Society (Facebook page)
2:00-3:30pm.  A popularly-oriented Zoom lecture on three popular finishing/finale dances from England and France in the late 18th and 19th centuries.  The official description: "The ball is almost over: you've worn holes in your slippers, your hair is coming down, and you may be a little bit drunk -- but you still want that one last dance, the finishing dance! Whether it's La Boulangère (the only dance mentioned by name in Jane Austen's novels) or Sir Roger de Coverley (stretching through the Regency to Charles Dickens), or the Grandfather dance, the finishing dance was your last hurrah of the evening."  $5 per person, limited to fifty sixty people.  See the Facebook event or the HT&DS website for registration.

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I am available for private or group online lessons and talks via Skype or Zoom (or your videoconferencing software of choice) during the pandemic; please email me directly if you would like to schedule a private lesson or talk.  I am also available for small-group in-person dance events; fully vaccinated dancers only, please!

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Coming in February: more of the same, including another lecture!