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

November 2, 2017

Aladdin Quadrille

Like the New Scotia Quadrille, the Aladdin Quadrille is one of several single-figure quadrilles found in the “New, Enlarged, & Complete Edition” of D. (David) Anderson’s Ball-Room Guide (Dundee, this edition undated but probably c1886). This is a simple, fun figure that would fit easily into a Scottish-themed ball.

Despite there being various quadrille sets called the Aladdin Quadrilles, Anderson doesn’t seem to have had any specific music in mind. He notes only that it can be danced in 2/4 or 6/8.

Aladdin Quadrille (8 bars introduction + 64 bars x4)
8b Introduction/honors (not repeated)
8b All promenade round
4b Ladies advance to the center and retire
4b Gentlemen advance to the center and retire
8b All set to partners and turn by the right hand
8b Head couples advance and retire, then half right and left
8b Side couples advance and retire, then half right and left
8b Grand chain half round to places
16b All waltz (in duple time) around (see performance notes below)

The figure is danced four times, with the head couples leading on the first and third iterations and the side couples leading on the second and fourth.

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June 8, 2017

Early Foxtrot: Catch Steps

I spent a lot of time teaching foxtrot this spring, and after going through my usual repertoire of easy foxtrot variations with several different groups, I feel I need to add a few new steps. Nothing complicated, just something to spice up my standard set. Both of these steps are taken from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).

The basic catch step is just a simple way to change the lead foot, either because it's needed for a variation or just for fun. It's so easy I can explain it without a little numbered chart:

Gentleman starts left forward. Walk for awhile. When you want to change lead foot, make a single two-step. Keep walking with the lead (odd count; the strong beat of the music) on the other foot. The lady does the same thing, but backward and starting on the right foot.

More formally:

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October 13, 2016

A Masked Ball in Heidelberg, 1840s

A lengthy, lively description of a masquerade in Heidelberg may be found in Meister Karl’s Sketch-book, by the American humorist, journalist, and folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, who described the book in his Memoirs as

…an odd mélange, which had appeared in chapters in the Knickerbocker Magazine. It was titled Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book. It had no great success beyond attaining to a second edition long after; yet Washington Irving praised it to everybody, and wrote to me that he liked it so much that he kept it by him to nibble ever and anon, like a Stilton cheese or a paté de foie gras; and here and there I have known men, like the late Nicolas Trübner or E. L. Bulwer, who found a strange attraction in it, but it was emphatically caviare to the general reader. It had at least a style of its own, which found a few imitators. It ranks, I think, about pari passu with Coryatt’s “Crudities,” or lower. (p. 206)

The Sketch-Book (1855) was a fictionalized travel journal based on Leland’s experiences studying and traveling in Europe as a young man. In the preface, he explained that it had been written primarily between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, which would have been from 1840 to 1849. Leland spent three years during this period studying in Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris. He mentioned the various masked balls in Heidelberg in his Memoirs:
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October 1, 2016

Newport Fancy Dress Ball, 1850

The final fancy dress of the Newport summer season of 1850 occurred on Wednesday, September 4th. It was covered by The Boston Herald on September 5th (“Grand Fancy Ball at Newport”, p. 4) and more extensively by The New York Herald on September 6th (“The Grand Fancy Dress Ball at Newport”, p. 1). The bulk of the coverage was devoted to lists of attendees and their costumes, as is typical for fancy dress balls, but there are some other tidbits of useful information as well. The New York Herald article is extremely lengthy, so I have not transcribed all of it. The article from The Boston Herald is quite short, but not nearly as interesting.

The ball was held at the rebuilt Ocean House, the original of which had opened in 1844, burned down, and been rebuilt. This Ocean House was not the same as the modern Ocean House in Newport. A different hotel by the same name opened in 1868, was demolished in 2005, and then rebuilt again in 2010.

At the RhodeTour website, Dr. Brian Knoth writes about the first two Ocean Houses, with specific mention of the 1850 Fancy Dress Ball:

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December 11, 2014

Fox Trot Hats

I’ve been looking for something amusing to wind up the centennial year of the foxtrot, and I found it in the November 17, 1914, issue of The Richmond Times-Dispatch: some fashion advice for the foxtrotting ladies in the store advertisement shown at left:

Fox-Trotting Without a Fox Trot Hat
is like joy riding on a steam roller.

How do I follow up a line like that? I can only suggest reading the rest of the ad (click to enlarge) for more delightfully fulsome language.

For historical dancers, this is a reminder that during the 1910s, dancing in a hat at an afternoon thé dansant was perfectly proper, though judging by the advertisement, either not everyone agreed or not everyone succeeded in finding a suitable hat:
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October 9, 2014

Basic Foxtrots from Edna Lee

Earlier this year I talked about nine different variations from the handy little booklet Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) in two mini-series, starting here (three posts) and here (two posts). My choice of sequences may have given the impression that Lee's collection was mostly odd little variations with (often) even odder names (Chaplin Trot, anyone?) That's because I was skipping over the simplest sequences given by Lee, since I have encountered them elsewhere and written about them, or similar sequences, in earlier posts.

Here, I'm going to give a quick rundown of eight very basic sequences that Lee included among her more unusual and/or unique ones so that it is clear that there was a certain basic repertoire overlapping what is found in many other sources.

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November 5, 2012

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Pasadena

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.

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May 14, 2012

La Russe

(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.

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October 6, 2010

The Newport

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.

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July 5, 2010

The Invention of the York?

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.

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