I'm going to jointly cover the two contra dances prolific nineteenth century musician-caller-author-publisher Elias Howe published under the titles Jenny Lind Polka and German Polka because they share the same unusual eight-bar sequence of figures as well as an additional sixteen of the thirty-two bars total of each dance. They're more variations on a theme than separate dances.
Their names refer to pieces of music. "Jenny Lind Polka" was, of course, named for the famous "Swedish nightingale", shown at left, who toured the United States in 1850-1852. It is still regularly played and recorded. "German Polka" is more obscure.
Both dances were published with consistent wording for each in Howe's Complete ball-room handbook (1858), American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (1862 and 1866), and New American Dancing Master (1882 and 1892). I think it extremely likely that the figures were arranged by Howe himself. One or both dances also appeared in two works that were highly derivative of Howe: both of them in John M. Schell's Prompting, How To Do It. (New York/Boston/Chicago, 1890), and the Jenny Lind Polka alone, with a difference that was probably an error, in the anonymous Gems of the Ball Room Call Book. (Chicago, 1896).
Here are the two dances as published by Howe. The image is taken from the 1862 American dancing master; click to enlarge it.
The asterisks are significant: a footnote at the bottom of the page says the dancers should "Form as for common Contra Dance", meaning ladies on one side and gentlemen on the other. This seems to have been completely ignored by twentieth-century reconstructors -- in Ricky Holden's The Contra Dance Book
First, let's take the two dances side by side. Howe is inconsistent about the markers for the length of the figures, but they are standard figures with standard widths that fit into standard eight-bar strains for a thirty-two bar dance, and the non-Howe books helpfully break them down by bars:
Jenny Lind Polka German Polka
4b First two couples balance First two couples right hands across
4b and turn partners and left hands back
4b polka down the center polka down the center
4b and up the outside and up the outside
4b right hands across four swing half round
4b and left hands back polka to places
4b half promenade half promenade
4b half right and left to places half right and left to places
Side by side, it's easy to see the matching figures in the second and fourth eight bars (bold/italic above). The rights hands across/left hands back was just moved around.
This is an unusually balanced contra for the period: the two couples are both active throughout with identical figures. They were still officially doing contra dances as triple minors at this point, so there would have been a third couple with nothing to do but act as traffic cones, but that practice was on its way out, and I don't have a problem dispensing with the third couple in a dance like this. It makes the polka down and come up the outsides figure a bit easier if the first two couples do not have to loop around a third at the bottom.
Howe was also on the leading edge of discarding the "snowball" start for contra dances and having every minor set start simultaneously; either way is reasonable for this dance. A simultaneous start means considerably fewer repetitions to get everyone back to original places.
What's not shown in the chart for lack of space: after polking down the set, the couples do not split by gender and cast individually. They cast different ways as couples, as is often done in a grand march, to go up the outside. The first couple turns left to go up the ladies' side and the second couple turns right to go up the gentlemen's side. I would reconstruct this as the lady of each couple being on the left of her partner, so in the first couple the lady serves as the pivot point as they turn up the set and then curve around into progressed places. In the second couple, the gentleman does.
After the polka down and cast up, the minor set should look like this, with some extra couples added to make it obvious which line is which:
TOP OF SET
G2 L2
G1 L1
G L
G L
G L
etc. etc.
All four are progressed, but each dancer is on their proper side. The following sixteen bars of figures take them halfway round and back, then halfway round and back again, to end in this same progressed position ready to repeat the dance.
Now, let's talk about the figures and how to do them, because it can be a little bit tricky.
Jenny Lind Polka
The dancers face and balance to their partners. They then turn their partners, presumably by two hands, completely around to original sides. At this point I would have the dancers keep the hands closest to the top of the set (gentleman's left/lady's right) and release the other hands to take a standard ballroom hold with joined hands then pointing up the set and "over elbows" aiming down. If they release hands early, each lady's track as they complete the turn will carry her right into the gentleman's waiting arm. The lady needs to free her left foot and the gentleman his right for the polka.
The polka down (led by the second couple) is four bars (two complete turns), starting with a hop on the usual first foot (gentleman's left/lady's right) and the turn leading with the usual second foot. Basically, the dancers start with the second half of a conventional polka turn. At the end of two complete turns, they should keep the joined hands (his left, her right) and open up; the gentleman will need to release the lady from his right arm a bit early to do this in a controlled fashion. This will leave them side by side, the lady on the left. The couples then cast off in couples as described above, first couple turning left and second turning right. It's imperative that the second couple go a bit further at the top of the set in order to give the first couple space to swing into place below them without the second lady and first gentleman running into each other. The first couple needs to move briskly to get into places without blocking the second.
The lead up the outside (with a third couple acting as traffic cones):
TOP OF SET
L2--G2 G L L1-G1
The rest of the dance is easy. The four dancers start like this:
G2 L2
G1 L1
Right hands across and left hands back takes them back to those same places. The half-promenade will have the first couple proper but the second improper; the first gentleman and second lady pass left shoulders in the center:
G2
L2
G1
L1
Positions at end of the half-promenade:
L1 G1
L2 G2
Despite the quadrille-like lead-in, I prefer the half right and left that then takes them back to places to stick with country dance style, since it is a standard ending figure for contra dances of this era, rather than a quadrille chaîne anglaise. As the couples swing around to opposite place at the end of the promenade in the typical right-in-right/left-in-left promenade hand hold, drop the left hands and come face to face with partners, ready to flow into changing places with partners by right hands and then neighbors by left to end up, once more, in proper progressed positions, the first couple ready to start the dance with the next couple below:
G2 L2
G1 L1
German Polka
The opening figure of right hands across/left back makes the transition into closed hold just slightly more complicated. I find it most graceful for the ladies to turn over their right shoulder at the end of the moulinet to meet their partners and slip into closed hold. This will also leave them slightly further down the set, which is all to the good when preparing to turn.
The polka down the center and casting by couples up the outside is exactly as described above.
As the dancers arrive in their progressed places at the top of the set, they take hands four in a circle and circle halfway to the left (clockwise). That will leave them like this:
L1 G1
L2 G2
The dancers should not open out into their lines but immediately slip into a closed ballroom hold and polka counter-clockwise back to places, starting with their normal first foot (gentleman's left/lady's right). With only four bars to do it this is more reversing the line than making a circle, and the couples should try to change places fast enough for the fourth bar to be devoted to separating in order to be ready for the next figure. Three bars of turning should leave the dancers more-or-less on proper sides; the four bar of separating can be used to fix any minor location problems.
The final half-promenade and half right and left to places are as previously described.
Steps
One could make a reasonable case for using polka steps, especially in a casual "hop-slide-close-slide" style, for the entire dance. I would certainly use them for the coming up the outsides after the polka down, to help the dancers cover territory quickly. But for the rest of the dance, they are not really necessary and may provide more travel than there is really room for unless the set is very widely-spaced. So I would keep the initial balance in the Jenny Lind as a three-steps-and-close forward and back and use walking steps for all other figures. I fully expect that dancers feeling particularly enthusiastic and energetic will ignore this and polka throughout.
Other Notes
1. In Gems of the Ball Room, the Jenny Lind Polka is given as a dance to be performed six times by a six couple set, which is common in that source but which I don't see as a particularly necessary restriction. It also has an extra eight bars of figures: a ladies' chain has been inserted before the half-promenade. Since no other source shows this and since it would make the dance a non-standard forty-bar length, I regard it as an error.
2. In Howe's Complete ball-room handbook (1858) there is no asterisk or note about formation; perhaps in later books Howe realized there might be confusion and added the extra guidance. But there is a note that does not appear in any other work that the dance can end with all couples polking round the hall. If the dancers are accomplished at polka, I think that's a great way to end either dance.
3. If the dancers are not accomplished at polka, it's a reasonable adaptation to change the turning polkas into promenades using polka steps.
Music
"Jenny Lind Polka" seems to have been popular and remains known among traditional musicians today. Here's award-winning fiddler Vivian Williams and her husband Phil (both accomplished music and dance historians as well!) performing it:
Sheet music for it is easy to find. Here's an arrangement published by Howe in his 1859 Drawing Room Dances. It was included there as music for a polka quadrille figure; ignore the figures printed with it.
An 1846 arrangement in a different key by Allen Dodworth which neatly fits a thirty-two-bar dance may be found at the Library of Congress website. A modern arrangement appears in The Civil War Ballroom Band Book by the dance band Spare Parts, which also has a recording of it on the album The Civil War Ballroom. A web search will easily turn up more arrangements. There is another recording on the Grandview Victorian Orchestra's album Elegant Music from Times Gone By. Both recordings are meant for dancing a polka, not a contra dance, and would need to be looped to be long enough.
"German Polka" is a bit more of a mystery. Here's the tune Howe published by that name in his Musicians Omnibus, No. 2 (1863); click each image to enlarge:
Presumably that was the tune he had in mind for the dance. But I haven't been able to find a period arrangement or recording of it, so those wishing to use that tune will have to work from this single staff. Given how similar the two sets of dance figures are, I wouldn't have a problem just using "Jenny Lind Polka", or any other polka with a workable repeat structure.
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