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

October 15, 2018

A Fancy Dress Ball, Singapore, 1884

Originally posted in substantially similar form on February 11, 2011, at Historical Fancy Dress.

As can be seen from my other posts about fancy dress and masquerade balls, newspapers from the eighteenth century well into the twentieth often published lists of the costumes worn by the guests. The lists were often provided in advance of the actual event, so it’s possible not all of the costumes worked out, as anyone who’s ever tried to finish a costume at the last minute before a ball will understand.

The costumes were evidently more important than the dancing; while lists of outfits are routine in these writeups, full dance programs are rare and any information at all is not very common. This apparently held true even halfway around the world. The excerpts and costume lists below are from a fancy dress ball held by British expatriates in Singapore (!) in 1884. The sole mention of dancing is the opening quadrille.

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October 11, 2018

A Calico Ball, British Columbia, 1885

As described by Lucie Armstrong in The Ball-Room Guide (London and New York, c1880):

The Calico Ball is a fancy ball at which the dresses are made of calico. Sateen, chintz and velveteen are allowable, and any other material which is made of cotton. The invitation, of course, states the nature of the ball.

It really seems to have been primarily about the fabric rather than any costume theme, though obviously some costumes will work better when made out of cottons than others. She goes on to make some suggestions. For ladies: a dairymaid, a charity girl from St. Giles’, or a Dresden shepherdess. For gentlemen: a Maltese peasant, Albanian costume, Saxon dress, or an Italian peasant.

The anonymous author of Masquerades, tableaux and drills (New York, 1906) added more details:

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October 8, 2018

The Hewitts’ Plant Party, 1898

Originally posted in substantially similar form on September 24, 2010, at Historical Fancy Dress.

Jumping forward in time, from The New York Times on February 18, 1898 comes a full description of a very successful themed fancy dress event: a "Plant Party". The ladies were asked to dress in some "representative" costume, while the gentlemen were expected to appear in ordinary evening clothes and were given something like a vegetable boutonniere at the door. Supposedly, this was copied from something that Louis XVI did it at Versailles. I'd certainly like to see a description of that!

Sadly, very little information is given about the dancing: there was some, informal, after supper, and with no cotillion.

No full list of costumes was published, but there are some excellent examples at the end of how the ladies trimmed their gowns to match the theme.

I've transcribed the entire article below.

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October 4, 2018

Mrs. Walker’s Masqued Ball, 1804

Jumping from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century:

I first came across a description of Mrs. Walker's Masqued Ball as it was published in a Philadelphia journal, The Port-Folio, on January 19, 1805, with a credit to the The Morning Post, a noted London newspaper which famously covered the social activities of the upper classes in Regency England.

For several years, I had the article filed under the date 1805, but with a suspicious note attached because the outdoor party described (with a hostess concerned about the possibility of the heat being "oppressive") didn't sound likely to have occurred in January, even in England. I still haven't found the original Morning Post article, but I did turn up a shorter version of the same description (minus all the costume information) that was published in The Lancaster Gazette (of Lancaster, England, not Lancaster, Pennsylvania) on Saturday, July 14, 1804, with one critical word present:

on Wednesday se'nnight [emphasis mine]

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August 16, 2018

Zebley’s Tango

Moving right along with my tiny tango post series, here's another sequence from F. Leslie Clendenen's two editions of Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914). This one is simply called "Tango" and was provided by T. Victor Zebley, a Washington, D.C., dancing master. It isn't really a "tiny" tango; it's a full thirty-two measures, which is enough for a full-fledged sequence dance.

Zebley's tango is very straightforward to reconstruct and, provided one remembers the full sequence, easy to dance, with three points where the dancers can make some minor choices of their own. I give my preferences, but also describe the other options in the performance notes below.

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August 13, 2018

“Mixed Pickles” Tango

Continuing with my lengthening series of tiny tango sequences from the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen’s compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914), here’s another short (sixteen-bar) tango sequence. If not performed by all the dancers on the floor in unison, it must be done with care, since the dancers move directly against line of dance at two separate points.

For such a short sequence, there are quite a few niggling little problems with the instructions and reconstruction, which I’ll talk about a bit below.

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July 6, 2018

“Tango No. 1”

Continuing on with the tiny traveling tango sequences from 1914, here’s one that’s a bit less tiny than the Two-Step Tango. “Tango No. 1” is listed in both editions of Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) with the note “As taught in our classes.”, which presumably meant the classes of F. Leslie Clendenen’s own academy. That means that this is as much a class practice sequence as a social dance. As I reconstruct it — and see the reconstruction notes below — it is a reasonable sixteen bars (thirty-two beats) in length, and suitably easy for a class, as it only involves four basic moves – walking, a spin turn, draw steps, and grapevine.

The starting position is a closed ballroom hold with the gentleman’s back to line of dance and the lady facing line of dance. The gentleman starts on the left foot, the lady on the right. Steps are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

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July 2, 2018

Two-Step Tango

The Two-Step Tango is an anonymous eight-bar sequence published in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914). There are several of these tiny "tango" sequences that travel decorously around the room without much tango feel to them — see the similar Butterfly Tango and Dixie Swirl. These short progressive sequences all appeared in the first edition, along with the somewhat better-composed and more tango-like ones (including a "Tango Two-Step") from Albert Newman. The impression I get from this is that the more authentic tango was still making its way across the country in early 1914, so the authors of these sequences were still interpreting it as "slow one-step to tango music". The second edition of Dance Mad expanded the tango section enormously, retaining the short sequences but adding twenty-two pages of more authentic Argentinian and Parisian tango steps.

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February 22, 2018

Scotch, Hungarian, whatever (cotillion figure)
H. Layton Walker’s Grand Scotch Chain, published in Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), is only moderately interesting as a figure, but tracing its progress from a figure that was neither “grand” nor “Scotch” when it started out is an interesting illustration of how cotillion figures were transmitted across time and international borders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The figure itself is quite simple:
- Two couples separate and select new partners
- They form a four-couple quadrille set
- Head gentlemen turn by right elbows once and a half round, then give left elbows to opposite ladies and turn to place with her
- Side gentlemen repeat
- Head ladies repeat
- Side ladies repeat
- All take partners and waltz
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February 19, 2018

Double Quadrille (cotillion figure)

Double Quadrille is a cotillion (dance party game) figure from H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), though the “game” element is extremely limited. The original setup is not even a standard cotillion opening with couples dancing and then separating to find new partners; instead, each couple seeks another couple.

The language and timing of the figure are ambiguous, and I’ve found no other source to clarify things. So I’ve had to make some guesses and minor tweaks in order to create something that actually works.

Here’s the original language from Walker:

DOUBLE QUADRILLE.
Four couples perform a tour de valse. Each couple selects another couple and they form a double quadrille; the head couples right and left; half sides the same. Ladies chain; all the ladies forward four steps, turn and face partners; gentlemen take the right hand of partners and left hand of lady on their left; all balance; the ladies facing outward, gentlemen inward; turn partners to places. The figure is danced over to regain places. Signal for all to waltz to places.

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