Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
I spent a lot of time thinking about quintuple-meter (5/4 or 5/8 time) dances earlier this year, though not much of it showed up on Kickery at the time. Since historical dance description and terminology are not standardized, there’s an important distinction to keep in mind for all dances with some association with the number five:
Five steps (or movements) in a dance do not necessarily imply 5/4 or 5/8 time.
(more…)A while back I discussed the wonderful dance CD Music for Quadrilles, by the English band Green Ginger (with Kevin Smith). At the time, I skimmed over the tracks for five modern Scottish (RSCDS) dances, since I didn’t have any way to check the ones with historical sources against the originals. Since then, I’ve come across a copy of one of the editions of D. (David) Anderson’s Ball-Room Guide, a “New, Enlarged, & Complete Edition”, which the liner notes of Music for Quadrilles cite as the source for one of the historical dances, New Scotia Quadrille.
According to J. P. (Joan) and T. M. Flett in Traditional Dancing in Scotland
The Pasadena, a would-be replacement for the two-step, appears in the 1900 reprint of New York dancing master Allen Dodworth’s 1885 tome, Dancing and its relations to education and social life, but can be dated back to at least 1898. It appears to have been created as a dancing school dance, as Dodworth’s nephew, T. George Dodworth, discussed in his introduction to the new edition of his uncle’s manual:
In order to bring the work up to date, I have been requested
to write an introduction which will include a list of dances that have come into fashion since my uncle’s book was originally published.
As a matter of fact, however, society dances have decreased, rather than increased, during this interval. When this work first appeared most of the round dances described in its pages were fashionable. But Dame Fashion is fickle, and, owing to some unaccountable change in taste, we now have only the Two Step, the Waltz, occasionally a Saratoga Lancers, and the Cotillion. In the dancing-schools the old dances are still taught, but with numerous new combinations, which are composed to improve the pupil and keep alive the interest. From these combinations we have the Tuxedo Lancers, the Amsterdam, Gavotte der Kaiserin, Minuet de la Cour (for four persons), and the Pasedena.
(Note 6/3/24: I’ve written a follow-up to this post; the link is at the end. My reconstruction stands.)
I picked La Russe out some time ago while looking for easy late nineteenth century waltz-time variations. The name means “the Russian woman”, and I recently had the pleasure of teaching it in Moscow to a very talented group of Russian dancers.
No specific choreographer is known for La Russe, but we can date it with unusual precision to just over 130 years ago. Dancing master M. B. Gilbert, in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), noted that it was “introduced by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, May 1st, 1882,” and it turns up in a couple of other American dance manuals of the 1880s. All the descriptions are quite consistent, though the terminology used varies.
In commemoration of the American Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a seasonally appropriate dance from the American Civil War era, a country dance for a set of six couples.
While I have not done a comprehensive search, I appear to have instructions for “Harvest Home” only in a pair of dance manuals by Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862), which include far more country dances than is typical of other dance manuals of the time period. New England to this day retains a stronger country dance tradition, in the form of modern contra dance, than most other parts of the United States.
(more…)A new waltz or redowa variation pops up in a few of the manuals of the very late nineteenth century. Presumably named after the wealthy resort town, the Newport appears in slightly different versions in different manuals, but the common element appears to be a series of quick sliding steps.
Apparently the Newport was too new to be included in New York dancing master Allen Dodworth’s Dancing and its relations to education and social life (New York, 1885). The earliest and clearest description I have found is in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in Portland, Maine, in 1890. His version, included “by permission of Russ B. Walker,” is essentially an ornamented version of the standard waltz of the late nineteenth century, with two rapid slides to the side rather than one in each bar for a “step-side-close-side-close” sequence rather than the usual “step, side, close.” A half-turn is made on each bar, just as in the regular late nineteenth-century waltz, with a complete turn every two bars.
Subtitled Nouveau Quadrille, Le Triangle is not actually a quadrille in the literal sense of a dance involving facing couples. It was composed by F. Paul and published in his manual, Le Cotillon, in Paris in 1877 and is danced by three couples rather than four, arranged in the form of a triangle. Paul composed it to address the difficulty of finding four couples for the quadrille croisé of the time. He adds modestly that he does not intend to impose it upon dancers, but gives the description only as a proposal. I have never seen Le Triangle in any other source; it may never have been danced outside of Paul’s immediate circles.
A couple of months ago I described the late 19th-century waltz-time move known as the York, which incorporated mazurka-style heel-clicks and was considered a variation of the polka mazurka. At the time, the earliest source I had located was M.B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in 1890, where the dance was included “by permission of E.W. Masters,” possibly its creator. An interesting article from The New York Times, dated September 9, 1885, both brings the date of the dance back a few years and provides an amusing anecdote about the dance’s possible origin.
Among the moves described by Vernon and Irene Castle in their Victor Records for Dancing mini-manual (1914) are a trio of moves that are essentially box steps or fragments thereof: a so-called cortez (a.k.a. sentado or syncopated step), a double cortez, and a left-turning waltz. The rhythm is specified as QQS: three steps and hold. These make a nice set of variations to throw into basic walking-trotting sequences and two-step sequences when dancing a 1910s-style foxtrot.
Over a year ago I discussed some of the earliest walking and trotting patterns found in the earliest sources describing the foxtrot. Among other moves, I touched on the gliding series of chassé steps given in the two sequences in F. L. Clendenen’s Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914). The sideways glides were done in quick-quick rhythm for each slide-close. The two sequences were:
1. SS-SS-QQQQ-QQQQ twice, followed by four glides (step-closes) QQQQ-QQQQ
2. SS-QQQQ, followed by four glides QQQQ-QQQQ.
The man turns his left side toward the line of dance and the dancers execute a series of four sideways “step-closes” (QQ) along the line of dance. No turn is involved; the first part of the sequence (walking and trotting) restarts on the first foot moving along the line of dance as usual.
Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
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