Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Welcome to the original-format Capering & Kickery blog! Due to the Typepad shutdown in September and the resultant move to WordPress, the entire post archive is not yet available, as each post must be individually edited (formatting, images, music, videos, links, etc.) and indexed before it is restored. Please check back regularly over the next few months to see the progress in rejuvenating the blog!

Note: in the restored posts below, most of the internal links (to other Kickery posts) will remain down until the linked post is also restored. If you have a request to prioritize a particular post or set of posts, please contact me at the email above!

Post Archive

April 14, 2009

The Pompadour Waltz

The Pompadour Waltz is a minor but interesting variation on the five-step Boston or five-step waltz described by Albert Newman in 1914 (and by me here). I have found it only in the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis in 1914.

To perform the Pompadour, the dancers alternate brief hesitating grapevine sequences with the five-step Boston in an eight-bar sequence as described below. The steps given are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

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March 22, 2009

California Bus Stop/California Hustle

Still working my way through my collection of 1970s line dances, here's another one from The Complete Book on Disco and Ballroom Dancing (1979). The California Bus Stop, a.k.a. the California Hustle, is an easy thirty-six-beat dance. It's most notable characteristic is that it features claps and stamps on every fourth beat throughout the first two parts of the dance.

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March 2, 2009

Lamb’s Waltz Two Step

Here’s an easy waltz variation from English dance teacher William Lamb’s Everybody’s Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900). The Waltz Two Step is a short sequence of two-step done in waltz time which can be used as a variation in a late 19th-century waltz or as a short standalone sequence dance. Because the movements are quite slow-paced, it is best suited to extremely fast music.

This sequence represents the an early form of “hesitation waltz” from before that term came into use in the 1910s. In this case the normal two-step movement (briefly described in a previous post here) rather than being counted “1&2” in 2/4 rhythm, as is more typical in this era, is danced in 3/4 rhythm with each two-step stretched over two full bars of music, so that the slide-close-slide happens on the first, third, and fourth of the six beats.

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February 17, 2009

Waltz Step, Galop Time
- Era: 1880s-1890s (America)
In his sizable manual of couple dance variations, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert describes the Waltz-Galop succinctly as:

Waltz step, Galop time

While no other dancing master that I have found includes the waltz-galop by name, the accenting of a waltz step done in duple rather than triple time is discussed by Allen Dodworth in Dancing and its relations to education and social life (1885, reprinted several times through 1900) and is included in dances such as the turn-of-the-century Pasadena, and the idea that waltz steps can be transposed from triple to duple and vice-versa dates back as far as the sauteuse waltz of the first quarter of the 19th century.

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February 11, 2009

Lamb’s American Schottische

English dance teacher William Lamb, in his Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900), published quite a few short dance sequences, most of limited interest to the average dancer. His American Schottische has more potential than most of these because it does not involve any reverse-line-of-dance movement and thus can be easily used as a simple variation when dancing a late 19th-century schottische.

Despite the name, there is nothing specifically American about this particular sequence, and it does not seem to have been taken up by other writers/compilers of dance manuals, even those who otherwise plagiarized Lamb quite freely. I suspect it was not a particular hit, perhaps never having any life in period outside the pages of Lamb's book. Nonetheless, I find it quite danceable and an interesting break from more typical schottische patterns.

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February 6, 2009

The Line Walk

Here's another very basic line dance; any Kickery readers planning a 1970s-theme party are going to be all set this week. This one is also from The Complete Book on Disco and Ballroom Dancing (1979). It's thirty-eight beats long, but very easy, though the odd length means it will cross the phrase of the music. That's not unusual in disco-era line dances but drives some people crazy.

Unusually, the Line Walk starts on the left foot.

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February 5, 2009

The Disco Duck

Yes, here I go again with another easy line dance from The Complete Book on Disco and Ballroom Dancing (1979). I actually like these dances (which date back to my childhood), though I don't usually do them in batches. The immediate excuse for this extended excursion into the 1970s is that I'm going to be teaching an entire session of disco line dances a week or so from now at the Dance Flurry. This one is twice as long as Hot Chocolate/Bonaparte's Retreat (described here and here) and has slightly harder steps and "quick-quick-slow" rhythm sections which make it a more interesting dance.

The obvious music is the song "Disco Duck" by Rick Dees, which was a top Billboard hit for a couple of months in 1976, but it will work to any piece of lively disco music. Happily, the dance does not include any arm-flapping or other duck-like miming.

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February 4, 2009

Bonaparte’s Retreat

No, this has nothing to do with the Regency era! This is one of a trio of easy line dances I’ve drawn from The Complete Book on Disco and Ballroom Dancing (1979). It’s only sixteen beats long; line dances don’t get any easier than that. The name supposedly derives from the floor pattern of the dance:

…first the dancers mobilize, as they move in a line down the side, then they “retreat” backward and perform a “holding” action, before wheeling to the left and “defending” in another direction.

I find it’s best not to think too deeply about this. The book states that it’s also known as the “Hot Chocolate Line Dance,” and it is in fact the same step pattern as the dance “Hot Chocolate” I described in a previous post. (So yes, this is kind of a cheat of a post; the only new material here is the stuff above.)

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January 27, 2009

Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance
- Era: late 1890s-1900 England/France
“Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance,” was invented by English dancing master R. M. Crompton, later to become the first president of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and a part of the early 20th-century movement to keep ballroom dance out of the hands of the “wrong” people, which primarily meant American, and especially African-American, influences. That was all in the future in the 1890s, however, when this dance first appeared. It may have first been published in Crompton’s own book, Theory and Practice of Modern Dancing (London, c1891). Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Crompton’s work. The dance, however, can be found in at least three other works of the late 19th century, attributed in each case to Crompton.

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January 26, 2009

The Très-Chic
- Era: late 1890s-early 1900s
“The Très-Chic is a dance for couples in six-eight time, and is of very animated and lively character.”

With these words, William Lamb introduces “A new Round Dance for the Ball-Room.” Lamb was a noted English dance teacher and writer who served as president of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing. The Très-Chic appeared in his book Saxon’s Everybody’s Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London, c1898-1900; it is listed in the 1901 English Catalogue of Books for those years), from which it was blatantly plagiarized by two dance writers publishing in the American Midwest in the first few years of the twentieth century, including A.C. Wirth in his Complete Quadrille Call Book (Chicago, 1902) and D.F. Jay in his ABC Guide to Ballroom Dancing (Chicago, c1900), both using Lamb’s language to describe the dance. (Some biographical information about Wirth may be found in my earlier post on the Rye Waltz.)

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