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 7, 2013

Figure Four?

In a post a while back on the Regency “figure eight” and the many meanings of the term “figure” in that era, I mentioned a joking suggestion made by a guest at one of my Regency balls that a half figure eight should be called a “figure four”. Much to my astonishment, while pursuing some research on American country dance of this era, I actually found a figure four!

The figure is in an American manual published in 1808 in upstate New York, in the figure given for the tune “Flowers of Glasgow”:

Flowers of Glasgow
First couple figure four with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, lead up, hands round with third couple, and right and left at top.
— A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances, Otsego, NY, 1808.

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September 23, 2013

New Scotia Quadrille

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 (paid link), David Anderson taught in Dundee and in a number of other towns from c1850-1911. His Ball-Room Guide seems to have gone through at least five editions, with the “New, Enlarged” versions appearing between the mid-1880s and late 1890s. Since the one I examined is not dated, and I have no others to compare it to, I cannot date it precisely.

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August 5, 2013

Another Country Dance Gallopade
- Era: 1830s, England
This dance is one of a pair of country dance gallopades published in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition). They have no names or specific music, just numbers. I've previously discussed the second one; now here's the first. It's a very straightforward reconstruction.

Here are the original instructions:

No. 1. (4 parts)

The whole of the party arranged in the same way as for a country dance stand facing the top of the room, and chassez croise all with partners — then facing your partners, all advance, retire, and back to back — first and second couples hands across and back again — first lady pass outside the ladies to the bottom of the dance, the first gent. at the same time going down outside of the gents. and turn partner with both hands, remaining at bottom.
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July 11, 2013

Setting a higher standard

Moving on from what ought to be the rock-bottom minimal standard for anything calling itself a “Jane Austen ball”, even in the modern English country dance community, let me talk a little about higher standards, and what you’d want to do if you were interested in actually approaching as close as is practical to period practice. I’ve made two lists, one of what I consider to be important and one of elements that I do not consider as critical. Some items are characteristics of the dancing itself, and some have to do with ball format, because the latter is just as important as the former in establishing a period atmosphere and breaking people out of the modern mindset.

Modern English country dance groups are unlikely to want to try most (or any!) of this, but I hope it’s interesting to see how different an experience a ball would have been two hundred years ago. Some people have the bizarre idea that by suggesting that using “dances” (in the modern sense) from Jane Austen’s lifetime for something called a “Jane Austen ball”, I am somehow trying to impose actual historical practices on them. No, really, not!

For simplicity’s sake, I’ve limited this to just things pertaining to country dancing, rather than trying to cover the entire range of possible dance forms for either Austen herself or the actual decade of the Regency.

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July 8, 2013

Jane Austen balls for dummies

First off, let me note that the title of this post is not a comment on anyone’s intellect. It’s a riff on the titles of the popular series of “For Dummies” books, which are intended simply as accessible how-to guides for people who are not familiar with a topic. I have a couple of them myself. Neither I nor this post have any actual connection with these books, and no copyright infringement is intended.

It’s been pointed out to me that negative critiques of historically ludicrous “Regency” ball programs, however justified, are not actually helpful for people who are not dance scholars and whose audience is not interested in serious study of historical dance, but who would like to do a decent job programming such a ball, or at least avoid making obvious idiots of themselves by calling seventeenth-century dances at a Regency- or Jane Austen-themed event.

That’s a reasonable complaint. It’s always easier to criticize than to be constructive. And most of Kickery delves too deeply into the details for a modern country dance caller who just wants to do their gig.

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June 27, 2013

They ought to be ashamed of themselves

A while back, a friend sent me a flyer and the dance program for a “Regency ball” (the organizers’ term, not mine) in their area. I’m not going to tell you where, or when, or who the caller was, because there are plenty of similar events going on all over (at least) the English-speaking world. But I am going to tell you one thing:

This program is utter bullshit.

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June 20, 2013

Dixie Swirl

The Dixie Swirl is a short tango-ish sequence found in F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914). While it is not actually in the tango section and doesn't really have much of a tango feel, the brief description states that it is to be done to tango music. It is attributed to Mrs. Nantoinette Ohnmeiss, about whom I've not been able to discover any information.

The sequence appears at first glance to be eight bars, which is really too short to be interesting:

2b Gallop four times along line of dance (slide-close x4)
2b Two-step (presumably a full turn)
4b Swirl (the spin turn described here)
Repeat from the beginning

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April 22, 2013

New York, New York

The New York is another of the myriad “redowa and mazurka” variations given in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890). Along with the Fascination, it is one of only a few variations credited to Indianapolis dancing master D. B. Brenneke. It reappears among the material translated directly from Gilbert in [George] Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903), where it is listed as a mazurka and again credited to Brenneke.

Gilbert gives both this “New York” and another dance called “The New York”, making it unclear whether the name refers to the city or whether it is simply a new version of the York. Lopp lists it as La New York, along with two different dances called La Nouvelle York. Lopp’s translations suggest that the reference is to the city as much as to the popular dance. That might make it something of a pun, since the New York does include the characteristic sliding sequence found in the first measure of the York.

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April 18, 2013

The Independent York

The Independent York is an interesting variation on the original York, albeit one that was probably rarely danced outside a studio context. I have found it in only two sources. The earlier is Melvin Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), where it is uncredited, suggesting that Gilbert himself created it. The later source is La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903, much of which is simply a French translation of Gilbert. It appears there as L’Indépendant York and is credited to Gilbert. The sequence is identical in both sources. Gilbert classifies it, as he does the York, under “redowa and mazurka”; Lopp lists it as a mazurka.

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February 25, 2013

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (3 of 3)

(This is the third and final post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé. Previous posts are here (with a general introduction) and here.)

My third and (so far) final sequence for an eight-bar chassé-croisé comes from Elements and Principles of the Art of Dancing, a translation of J. H. Gourdoux published by Victor Guillou in Philadelphia in 1817. The translation, presumably of the 1811 Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville, is inconsistent in how closely it hews to Gourdoux’s original. This step sequence for chassé-croisé does not appear in the 1811 manual at all and may have originated with Guillou himself.

Even more than Gourdoux’s own sequence, this one features different footwork for the gentlemen and the ladies.

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