Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
While searching through a periodicals index I came across an interesting little article that neatly summarizes my previous three foxtrot posts. “How to Dance the Fox Trot” was published in the Los Angeles Times on October 18, 1914. It commends the dance as
the most simple of all the new dances. If you were discouraged when you tackled the tango or maxixe, here is a dance that every one can dance and enjoy with practically no mental exertion.
I will be teaching two dance workshops for The Elegant Arts Society in New York City this Sunday, June 1st. Logistical details are here.
The first (1:00-3:45pm) will focus on the dances of the Regency era (1810-1820), including steps and figures for country dances and the Royal Scotch and Caledonian Quadrilles, plus the Regency-era waltz. The Royal Scotch Quadrilles feature the "star" figure described in an earlier article here.
The second class (4:00-6:00pm) will focus on the lively, stamping, Spanish-influenced canario, using the canario section of Caroso’s 1581 dance Cesia Orsina as an example of joint and solo variations and improvisation.
The Mistletoe Hesitation is a lovely little sixteen-bar hesitation waltz sequence originally published in F. Leslie Clendenen’s Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis, 1914), a collection of dances and dance moves borrowed liberally from other dance teachers and manuals. The Mistletoe is attributed to M.W. Cain and is one of the earliest uses I have found of a twinkle step.
This is a nifty little move from the short Bassett/Elliott film, “The Much Talked About ‘Fox Trot’ ” (dated 1916) and is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a 1910s foxtrot: it actually has a hop. A hop in the foxtrot! That should startle anyone watching you. The sequence isn’t terribly difficult and should be accessible once a dancer is past the complete-novice stage.
In my previous foxtrot post I covered the basic walking and trotting patterns of the early foxtrot of the 1910s. These patterns are characterized by alternating series of slow (S) or quick (Q) steps, simple traveling interspersed with occasional sideways glides or half-turns, and consistently starting on the same foot (gentleman’s left, lady’s right). This simple foxtrot was complicated almost immediately by variations of rhythm, most notably the “quick-quick-slow” (QQS, or “one-and-two (pause)”) rhythm of the 19th-century two-step and polka. This post will discuss some of the variations introduced in the pre-1920 foxtrot as described by dancing masters Maurice Mouvet (1915) and Charles Coll (1919) and demonstrated by Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott on film (1916).
I will be teaching/calling a session of the Royal Scotch Quadrilles at the New England Folk Festival in Mansfield, Massachusetts (near Boston) this Friday, April 25th, from 9:00 to 9:50 p.m. The fifth figure of these quadrilles incorporates the “star” figure described in an earlier post here. This is a rare chance to learn and dance these quadrilles outside of a Regency class or event! Live music will be provided by Scottish country dance musician Cal Howard and friends. I would love to see any readers of this blog who might attend – please make yourself known after the session.
“What particular resemblance does the gait of a fox have to this dance?”
— spectator watching trotters, as quoted in Maurice’s Art of Dancing, 1915
It’s a reasonable question. The foxtrot evolved so rapidly after its debut in 1913-1914 that it can be difficult to sort out the earliest versions of the dance and derive an accurate picture of the foxtrot as danced in the 1910s.
Directions for dancing the foxtrot first began appearing in print in
1914. While it did not appear in Vernon and Irene Castle’s 1914 work, Modern Dancing, the Castles did include it that year in the booklet Victor Records for Dancing. Two brief descriptions were also published in F. L. Clenenden’s compendium, Dance Mad, also published in 1914, in St. Louis. In 1915, Maurice Mouvet published his description of the foxtrot in Maurice’s Art of Dancing, followed in 1919 by Charles Coll in Dancing Made Easy (link is to the 1922 reprint).
In addition to these written sources, a brief silent film clip dated 1916 shows dance instructors Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott demonstrating “The Much Talked About ‘Fox Trot’.”
The half and half, a hesitation waltz danced in 5/4 time, was one of those novelties that appeared and vanished quickly in 1914. There may be as many people alive now who know how to dance it as ever danced it in its own era! It is also handicapped by having very few surviving pieces of music in the right time signature. Today’s experienced historical social dancers can probably hum the eponymous “Half and Half” from memory. Sources describing the dance are equally difficult to come by; I have only three in my collection, though one of them, Dance Mad, generously provides four separate descriptions.
Click here to listen to a half and half tune in 5/4 time.
In the comments to a previous post of mine on the realities of Austen-era country dancing, alison[sic] asked about a scene in Pride and Prejudice:
…when describing the ball to Mr Bennet, Mrs Bennet refers to the dances by what I assumed were the time signatures: “Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifths with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger—” Or does this indicate some sort of dance configuration?
The short answer is that this is the way dances were organized at that time: with each partner, you would perform two dances in series before taking a rest and changing partners. Thomas Wilson, a noted dancing master (and prolific author) in London during the first quarter of the 19th century, wrote that:
“When the Ball commences, the company should not leave their places, or rest, till after the second Dance. Should the sets be short, they may Dance three Dances before they rest.”
— A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816
Coming up in just a couple of weeks:
On Saturday, March 29th, I will be precepting a small Victorian Ball for The Elegant Arts Society in New Haven, Connecticut. The theme is 1880s, the era of the bustle in ladies’ costume, but period costume is not required – come have fun dancing regardless! There will be live music from the wonderful dance musicians of Spare Parts and delicious refreshments made from Victorian recipes.
In his 1914 manual, Dances of To-day, Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman describes three different hesitations suitable for the one-step or Castle walk. In one description he notes that a hesitation is
…most practical, especially when one finds himself in a decidedly congested position, surrounded on all sides by merry dancers…it is the same as marking the time of the music, as the dancers execute the movement sur la place (on the spot).
Because of this practicality, hesitations are one of the first things I teach new dancers of the one-step. Here are Newman’s three hesitations for your dancing pleasure!
Research on social dance history does not always involve direct work on specific dances, and occasionally I get diverted to detective work on related historical mysteries in different fields – music, language, biography, etiquette, publishing history, and more. Over the last few weeks, I have pursued a successful quest for some pages missing from an 1840s work by Charles Durang. The process of locating these pages illustrates some of the frustrations of working with 19th century sources and the care needed in studying them.
In her delightful overview of 19th-century dance and etiquette, From the Ballroom to Hell (paid link), Elizabeth Aldrich states that Durang (1796-1870) was a dancer at the Bowery Theatre who later taught dance in Philadelphia with his daughter Caroline and published at least four dance manuals. I started looking for a copy of Durang’s The Ball-Room Bijou and Art of Dancing as part of the research for a particular set of quadrilles and rapidly found myself in the midst of a publication puzzle.
Rather last minute, but if any of my readers are in New York City, I will be doing some dance commentary at a concert by the New York Consort of Viols tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. in Manhattan. A flier is here. The music will primarily be 14th-18th century dance music as well as some period and modern pieces inspired by dance music. My comments will be popularly oriented rather than academic – brief introductory remarks in between pieces, not a lecture.
A short, performance-oriented summary for those who want to skip the background and just go out and schottische. This is intended as a summary for those already generally familiar with couple dancing, not as a way for new dancers to learn from scratch; a live teacher is always to be preferred to a written description.
A fuller discussion of and list of sources for the schottische may be found in The Early Schottische.
Another guilty-pleasure disco-era line dance! This is one I’ve actually used regularly as an easy cool-down dance at the end of my own practices for the last couple of years. The source is The Official Guide to Disco Dance Steps by Jack Villari & Kathleen Sims Villari, 1978. There’s no special music for this or any other line dance, but I often use either Wild Cherry’s "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" or Donna Summers’ "Bad Girls". The only thing even mildly unusual about the dance itself is that instead of quarter-turns after each repetition there are half-turns.
In the interest of not losing my mind, I’m going to be writing more
short posts interspersed with the longer articles that cover entire
dances. Today, a lovely little move for your 1910s tango.
Many teachers labor under the impression that the “Argentine” consists of one dance only, which is not true, it is a dance of great variety of movements…The Argentine of today embraces about as many varieties as there are dancers, owing perhaps, to the natural desire of our American dancers to be “inventors.”
— F. Leslie Clendenen, Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, St. Louis, Missouri, 1914
I try to remember that history (dance or otherwise) didn't actually stop sometime before I was born, so today I'm flashing back to 1978 and the era of disco line dances and, happily, a flood of disco dance manuals. I still find disco music very danceable, so ever so often I play around with reconstructing a few line dances to use as warmups or cool-downs at my own dance practices.
Here's a simple one: Hot Chocolate. It's only sixteen beats long, which is a very short repeat for a line dance. This may not be the easiest line dance ever, but it's got to be high on the list! The dance might have been inspired by the group of the same name, probably best known for the mid-'70s hit song "You Sexy Thing." The source is Let's Disco, no author given, published in 1978 by K-tel International, Inc.
Why, in fifteen-plus years of dancing ragtime socially, had I never done the eight step? It’s not an obscure step; it’s the first variation world-famous dance couple Vernon and Irene Castle give for the one-step and is also mentioned by them in their descriptions of the tango, half and half, and hesitation waltz. And yet somehow I’d neither danced it nor reconstructed it until late 2007 when I was looking for interesting one-step moves for some new dance students.
One of those questions I get asked all the time by musicians and others is “how many times through the tune for this dance?” The reference is to progressive longways country dances, which were the dominant social dance form in Europe and America from the mid-17th century through the early 19th century and are still enjoying widespread popularity in various living tradition and revival forms.
Modern English country dance and contra practice is for all couples to start the dance simultaneously, and the modern answer to the repeats question would be as many times as needed for everyone to enjoy the dance and fewer times than it would take for people to get bored. Modern Scottish (RSCDS) practice differs in that their dances are generally performed in short sets and have a fixed number of repeats. But if you truly wish to perform country dances in the historical style, it’s a bit more complex!
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Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
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