Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Author: Susan de Guardiola

  • Bits of Bijou: The Missing Middle of Durang’s 1848 Manual

    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.

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  • From the Tourdion to the Tango (February 17, 2008)

    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.

  • How to Dance the Early Schottische

    • Era: 1850s-1870s

    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.

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  • The New Yorker

    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.

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  • Corte Mad

    • Era: 1910s
    • Dance: tango

    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

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  • Hot Chocolate

    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. 

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  • How Many Times Do We Play That Tune?

    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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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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