Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Author: Susan de Guardiola

  • Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille

    Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille was created by Washington, D. C., dancing master George T. Sheldon, who had a lengthy career as a dancing master to both children and adults and was the author of at least a couple of other quadrilles.  In May, 1898, Sheldon was discussed briefly in M. B. Gilbert’s dance journal, The Director, in which it was said that he was then 72 and had been teaching for 57 years.  His most famous pupil was probably Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant.  This quadrille was said in several sources to be dedicated to her.

    Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille seems to have first been published around 1893, possibly by H. N. Grant, and thereafter turns up in a number of midwestern dance manuals running through the early years of the new century.  It is referred to variously by its full name, by the shorter Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille or Sheldon’s Polka Quadrille, and, in one manual, as Williams’ Presidential Polka Quadrille.  I have no idea who Williams was or why he was credited with a quadrille well documented as having been authored by Sheldon.

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  • July 2017 Gig Calendar

    Still in catchup/hibernation mode this month, but I will emerge briefly for a long-awaited return to DJing at Bluesy Tuesy, my blues and fusion dance home, and a Regency dance class.  Otherwise, find me online or not at all!

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    Tuesday, July 18th ~ Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston area)
    Bluesy Tuesy (Facebook event)
    7:30-11:00pm (lesson then dancing).  DJing blues for the second set, 9:45-11:00pm.

    Wednesday, July 26th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
    Jane Austen Era Dancing (Facebook event)
    Beginner-friendly lesson 7:00-8:30pm.  Informal dancing, no costume needed.  

    Friday, July 28th ~ Boston area
    Private event. 

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  • Early Foxtrot: Catch Steps

    I spent a lot of time teaching foxtrot this spring, and after going through my usual repertoire of easy foxtrot variations with several different groups, I feel I need to add a few new steps.  Nothing complicated, just something to spice up my standard set.  Both of these steps are taken from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).

    The basic catch step is just a simple way to change the lead foot, either because it's needed for a variation or just for fun.  It's so easy I can explain it without a little numbered chart: 

    Gentleman starts left forward.  Walk for awhile.  When you want to change lead foot, make a single two-step.  Keep walking with the lead (odd count; the strong beat of the music) on the other foot.  The lady does the same thing, but backward and starting on the right foot.

    More formally:

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  • June 2017 Gig Calendar

    Back in the U.S.A. at last!  I'm going to be keeping a very light teaching schedule with minimal travel this summer while I try to catch up on research and writing and various things I've neglected while living in Russia, but I'll be emerging from my warm-weather hibernation for a few little events here and there.

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    Friday-Saturday, June 9th-10th ~ East Durham, New York (Catskills)
    Steampunk in the Catskills III (Facebook event)
    Friendly, low-key steampunk weekend with two workshops in Victorian dancing at the Blackthorne Resort!

    Wednesday, June 14th ~ Middletown, Connecticut
    Jane Austen Era Dancing  (Facebook event)
    Beginner-friendly lesson 7:00-8:30pm.  Informal dancing, no costume needed.  

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  • Imperial Gavotte

    The Imperial Gavotte is one of the many schottische variations included in M. B. Gilbert’s book of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and in G. W. Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It is attributed to Professor A. T. Graves of Albany, New York, and noted by Gilbert to have been accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing in New York on September 4, 1889.  The Society endorsement gave it enough exposure for it to turn up outside Graves’ own studio: in the October 26, 1890, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), it is listed as one of the new dances to be taught by John Mahler.

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  • May 2017 Gig Calendar

    This will be my final month of Russian residency, continuing my regular Moscow classes in cross-step waltz and American ragtime dance, plus at least one one-shot class in Moscow in nineteenth-century American contradance before I head home.  A couple of other things are in the works and may yet be added to this schedule, so check back as the month goes on!

    For Russian-language information and questions about my classes in Russia this spring, please see my VK community.

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  • American Gavotte / Polka Américaine

    The American Gavotte is another of the variations published by dancing master M. B. Gilbert in his manual of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and republished by G. W. Lopp in La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It was attributed by Gilbert to James P. Brooks of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (and by Lopp to “J.-D. Brooks”).  Gilbert also noted that it was adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York — this would have been in 1886, from contemporary writeups of the event — and published by permission of White Smith Music Publishing Co.  Lopp listed it as “Polka Américaine (American Gavotte)”

    I’ve discussed a couple of other American “gavotte” variations before, but both of those were for the schottische.  The American Gavotte is listed as a polka, though it actually works perfectly well to schottische music and there is some confusion surround how it is notated that suggests that it might have originally been meant as a schottische; see the music note below.  It certainly has some choreographic kinship with the schottische gavottes in that it also uses the rhythm pattern “1&2&3,4” stepped as “slide, chassé, chassé, close” or “slide-close-slide-close-slide, close”.  This is one measure of schottische as usually counted, but two measures of polka.  Because of the pattern of the following four beats of music, I actually prefer to break the first four up into two bars, polka style, as follows, with dancers starting on their first foot (his left, her right):

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  • Flower Girl’s Dance

    Flower Girl’s Dance is an American Civil War-era contra dance that I remember dancing way back in the early 1990s when I first started doing mid-nineteenth-century dance.  But the version we did does not actually match that found in any source I’ve ever seen.  And it’s easy to see why: the versions given in the sources don’t actually work very well.  And now that I’ve reconstructed the California Reel, I have a little theory about why that is.

    The earliest sources I have for Flower Girl’s Dance are Elias Howe’s two 1858 books, the Pocket Ball-Room Prompter and the Complete Ball-Room Handbook.  I strongly suspect that all the later sources were copying to some degree from Howe.  So let’s look at Howe’s instructions:

    FLOWER GIRL’S DANCE.
    (Music: Girl I left behind me.)
    Form as for Spanish Dance. All chassa to the right, half balance–chassa back, swing four half round–swing four half round and back–half promenade, half right and left–forward and back all, forward and pass to next couple (as in the Haymakers).

    There are some minor differences of spelling and punctuation, but the wording is essentially the same across almost forty years of Howe publications.  Taken at face value with the hash marks setting off eight-bar musical strains, this yields a 40-bar dance:

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  • California Reel

    There’s the famous Virginia Reel.  There’s a Kentucky Reel.  Why not a California Reel?

    Unlike those other two reels, which are full-set dances, the California Reel is a normal  progressive contra dance in the “Spanish Dance” format: couple facing couple, either down a longways set or in a circle.  For this particular dance, a line of couples will work better.

    I have five sources for California Reel, though two of them are simply later editions of other sources:

    • The ball-room manual, containing a complete description of contra dances, with remarks on cotillions, quadrilles, and Spanish dance, revised edition, presumed to be by William Henry Quimby (Belfast, Maine, 1856; introduction signed W. H. Q)
    • The ball room guide : a description of the most popular contra dances of the day, (Laconia, New Hampshire, 1858)
    • Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1882)
    • Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1892)

    All of them have the same language in the description, varying only in punctuation and spelling.  I am reasonably sure that the text in most of these sources was copied from either the 1856 source or some earlier source.

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  • The Western Normal Newport

    The Western Normal Newport was named after the Western Association Normal School Masters of Dancing, a professional organization for dancing masters in western North America.  “Normal school” sounds odd to modern ears, but historically, it didn’t mean what we’d imagine today.  A normal school was a teacher-training school, where the “norms” of teaching and subject material were taught; more information on normal schools in general may be found here.  The Western Association Normal School was founded in 1894 under Canadian dancing master John Freeman Davis, its first president.

    My only source for the Western Normal Newport is George Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Lopp was from the northwestern USA and may have been a member of the Normal School or at least aware of it.  The variation’s name, as given in French by Lopp, was Le Western Normal Newport, attributed to l’Association de l’École normale des Maîtres de danse de l’Ouest.

    Given that the school was founded in 1894, the Western Normal Newport was obviously created too late to appear in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in Portland, Maine, in 1890, from which Lopp cribbed so much of his own book.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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