Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Author: Susan de Guardiola

  • Early Foxtrot: The Minuet Turn

    Keeping with the foxtrot theme, here's one more little sequence for foxtrot or one-step from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  Despite its overt simplicity, it actually manages to present a minor reconstruction issue!  As for the name…well, to be perfectly honest, I see absolutely no connection here to the minuet, any more than I do with Newman's Minuet Tango.  There seems to have been some concept of "minuet" in the 1910s which I have completely failed to grasp.

    The gentleman's steps are given; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers begin in normal ballroom hold, the gentleman facing forward along line of dance and the lady backward.

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  • Early Foxtrot: The Pavlowa Extension

    For no reason other than habit, June is always foxtrot month for me, and despite the general shutdown of dance classes, I’m lucky enough to have a convenient partner at hand for experimentation with new variations.  So let’s look at yet another of the many step-sequences described in Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916)!

    The Pavlowa Extension was, of course, named for the famous ballerina Anna Pavlowa (Pavlova), who toured America in the mid-1910s and dipped into social dance choreography with a music-composition contest resulting in a trio of dances published in The Ladies’ Home Journal in early 1915.  She (or her ghostwriter) and (supposedly) members of her troupe also offered opinions and suggestions about dancing the one-step, Boston, and foxtrot.  This variation, however, is not among those even indirectly associated with Pavlova.  It probably was merely named in her honor, or perhaps was inspired by a characteristic movement in her dancing.

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  • A Leap Year Ball, Providence, 1892

    Moving from the American frontier back to the east coast and into increasingly amusing descriptions of leap year events, here’s a very upscale event held in Providence, Rhode Island, on Monday, February 29, 1892, and reported in The Providence News on Tuesday, March 1.  This was a much more glittering affair than the frontier balls in Montana and Wyoming.  According to the article, subscriptions to the ball cost $25 for eight invitations, and the German (cotillion) favors cost an estimated $900.  In today’s terms, that is around $700 for the tickets and an eye-popping $25,000 for the favors, which were always an opportunity for conspicuous consumption among upper-class society.

    The ball was held at the brand-new Trocadero (1891), which, according to Providence’s inventory in 1980 for the National Register of Historic Places, was a restaurant and dancing parlor owned by local businessman Lloyd Tillinghast, who also provided the ball supper, served on “small and beautifully decked tables” by waiters brought in from Boston and New York.  The Trocadero no longer stands, alas.  Two bands were engaged: Reeves’ Band and the “Hungarian band of New York”, who alternated playing.

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  • A Leap Year Ball, Wyoming, 1888

    Continuing to roam around the late nineteenth century American frontier, where a surprising number of newspaper descriptions of leap year balls originate, here are some excerpts from a burbling account of a ball in the small town of Douglas, Wyoming.  Like Sun River, it was founded in 1867 and was probably extremely small.  The 1890 Wyoming census recorded only 2,988 people in all of Converse County.  The ball was described on page five of Bill Barlow’s Budget on Wednesday, February 8, 1888, as having taken place the previous Friday evening.  The newspaper title is interesting; more about the paper and its colorful founder, Merris C. Barrow, may be found at the Wyoming Historical Society’s Wyohistory site.

    The ball was held at the Douglas opera house and was described as “the most successful and enjoyable affair of its kind in the history of Douglas.”  Balls are generally described in newspapers as successful unless some sort of disaster occurs, but in a town whose history stretched back only two decades, it might actually have been true.

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  • December 2019 Gig Calendar

    December will be a quite month of hibernation, research, and private lessons and classes.  The dance series at the American Center at the U. S. Embassy will continue with one regular dance and a holiday party!

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  • November 2019 Gig Calendar

    I'll be juggling two big trips in November – to Kyiv, Ukraine, for a ball and a day of classes, then back to the USA in November for the Remembrance Day Weekend balls and a country dance evening in Chicago!  In Moscow, I'll be continuing some private lessons and doing another public dance at the American Center at the U. S. Embassy.

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  • A Ballroom Basilisk, 1897

    I'm just going to leave this story here without any commentary.

    Happy Halloween!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    GONE WITH A BASILISK.

    A LURID SHORT STORY.

    BY G. L. Calderon

    Reginald passed his hand wearily over his aching brow, and glided languishing between the purple portières.  Within was a chaos of whirling muslin and hungry faces swimming on a sea of passionate, throbbing music.  There was a mist before his eyes; grinning heads floated restlessly by, gibbering in the shell-like ears of painted women.  Amid the fevered maelstrom, one figure loomed large and close upon his attention.  It was the hostess.  A hot wet hand pressed his.  “Law! what a squash!” he murmured in her ear, then plunged into the stream, and was borne away to the other side of the room.

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  • Mr. Palmer comes of age, Yarmouth, 1831

    Moving a bit forward in time, the coming of age ball of Mr. Samuel Palmer, junior, on Tuesday, March 1st, 1831, was accorded detailed coverage the following Saturday, March 5th, in The Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette.  The family seems to have been a prominent one, since they convinced then-Mayor Edmund Preston to lend them a hall and the whole town to deck itself out in celebration of their son's birthday.  And, of course, they were wealthy enough to throw a ball for several hundred guests.  Piecing together public records, I am reasonably certain that the birthday boy's full name was Samuel Thurtell Palmer (c1810-1850), whose parents were probably Samuel and Susanna (Thurtell?) Palmer.

    Most of the article was, as usual, devoted to lengthy lists of guests and their costumes, but there were some interesting tidbits here and there.  The transcriptions below include all of the article with the exception of the lists that just named the attendees and their outfits.

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  • October 2019 Gig Calendar

    I am once more happily ensconced in Russia!  I am not launching a full public schedule this month, but I will be experimenting with teaching a short class at the American Center in Moscow (part of the U.S. Embassy); if it goes well, it will become a regular series.  And I may throw a small party at the end of the month – watch this post for updates!  (Edited to add – but I decided not to!  Maybe later in the autumn!)

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  • September 2019 Gig Calendar

    One last non-gig calendar for my extended summer vacation!  This month I am moving back to Russia, and starting in October there will once more be classes, parties, and the occasional weekend of travel.  I don't expect any public events this month.  In the meantime, I am still available for private lessons in Connecticut before I leave (though I will be super-busy packing!)  and in Moscow once I arrive.  Email me directly if you would like to schedule a private lesson.

    See you in October!

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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