In late 1914, the Columbia Graphophone Company published How to Dance the Fox Trot by the noted dancer Joan Sawyer, a little promotional booklet whose cover is shown at left. Columbia's goal was to promote record sales, but the booklet is a well-written source for early foxtrot.
An introductory note from Ms. Sawyer dated November 23, 1914, declared:
The Fox-trot was originated and danced first by me at my Persian Garden in New York and later in vaudeville.
I have no particular desire to delve into the eternal dispute over who, exactly, created the foxtrot, but Sawyer was certainly one of the earliest to popularize it and to publish a coherent set of sequences for dancing it. I've already written about three of her four sequences (the first is a standard one) and will not repeat all the descriptions, but here is the list with the names given by Sawyer:
1. The Walk and Trot.
2. The Drag Step and Trot.
3. The Maxixe Glide and Trot.
4. The Zig-Zag Step and Trot.
It was not until relatively recently, when I was working on the Zig-Zag Step, that I realized that another source gave a list of four sequences suspiciously similar to Sawyer's: a booklet with the unwieldy title Description of Modern Dances as Standardized by the New York Society Teachers of Dancing and approved by the Congress of Dancing Societies of America at meeting held December 27th, 1914, in New York City, N. Y. (American National Association Masters of Dancing, Pittsburgh, 1915). The dancing masters didn't give their variations names, but the list taken as a whole looks awfully familiar:
- walking and trotting
- side-close step and trotting
- maxixe two-step and trotting
- zig-zag steps and trotting
Each individual variation is just a bit different than those given by Sawyer, but I find it hard to believe that the matching sequence is a coincidence, particularly since the maxixe and zig-zag variations are, so far as I have discovered, unique to these two sources.
Here's a list of direct comparisons between Sawyer's sequences and the dancing masters':
1. Walk/trot
Sawyer: SSSS QQQQ QQQQ; all steps straight (exactly as described in #4 here)
DMs: SSSS QQQQ QQQQ; last four quicks turning
2. Drag (side step)/trot
Sawyer: Side step, close, and four trots, SSQQQQ (described here)
DMs: Sawyer's sequence repeated twice followed by SSSS turning to the right
3. Maxixe/trot
Sawyer: Four maxixe-styles two-steps and eight trots, QQS QQS QQS QQS QQQQQQQQ (described here)
DMs: Maxixe-styles two-step half-turn QQS, four trots QQQQ, repeat QQS QQQQ
4. Zig-Zag/trot or walk
Sawyer: two zig-zags then, presumably, eight trots, QQS QQS QQQQQQQQ (interpreted here)
DMs: four fast zig-zags and two walks, QQQ QQQ QQQ QQQ SS
Sawyer was based in New York City, where the dancing masters' meeting was held. She might even have attended it. Did her teaching or dancing influence their list of sequences? Did they get a copy of the Columbia booklet, copy the sequences, and tweak them? Either way, they did not credit Sawyer.
We can never know for certain one way or the other, but personally, I believe there was some influence, at least.
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