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

August 4, 2009

Sliding Along in the 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.

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July 4, 2009

Le Klondike Two Step

Reading this morning’s headlines about events in Alaska, it seems the moment to post this little French sequence dance, which can also be used to vary an early twentieth-century two-step. I’ve found this sequence in only one source: La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903 as part of a two-book compendium. The smaller part (forty-five pages to the two hundred-plus of La Danse) of the compendium is a brief manual of etiquette and costume written by J. Chéron.

Mr. Lopp seems to have been an interesting character, an American expatriate and former Chicago dancing master whose partnership in a Parisian musical conservatory went extremely sour, resulting in lawsuits, lockouts, and a “very tempestuous scene” with one of the patronesses of the conservatory, who insisted on performing a concerto she had composed. Apparently the piece was so dreadful that the audience

was unable…to endure the entire infliction, and most of those present incontinently left after the first movement had been half finished.

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June 20, 2009

Alternating the One- and Three-Slide Rackets
- Era: 1880s into very early 1900s
Combining the one-slide rackets and three-slide rackets previously described creates an interestingly varied dance which is referred to by the prominent late-nineteenth-century dancing master Melvin B. Gilbert simply as the Racket, with no further descriptor. The unadorned term is used by other writers to refer to several different variations in both 2/4 and 3/4 time, however, leaving us with unwieldy labels such as Allen Dodworth’s “Alternating the One Slide and Three Slide to Galop.”

Whatever one may call it, the sequence is not difficult once both the one-slide and three-slide rackets have been mastered. Conceptually, one simply alternates two bars of one with two bars of the other to build an eight-bar sequence. For the one-slide racket, two bars will be moving to the left and right (in whichever order); for the three-slide racket, two bars means moving either to the left or to the right. So sequences may be built as follows:

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June 17, 2009

The Three-Slide Racket
- Era: 1880s into very early 1900s
The three-slide racket extends the two-bar repeat pattern of the one-slide racket previously described into a four-bar pattern which has a more galop-like feel and is somewhat easier to initiate. It is described in the major dance late-nineteenth-century dance manuals of M.B. Gilbert and Allen Dodworth and in two minor compilation manuals, one of which (Cartier’s Practical Illustrated Waltz Instructor) names it “The Wave.”

The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite. The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance. Like the one-slide racket, the three-slide racket follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

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June 14, 2009

The Galop Racket or One-Slide Racket
- Era: 1880s into very early 1900s
The galop racket or one-slide racket is the simplest of the various rackets and is described under both names in different sources. In one Parisian manual it is simply “La Raquette,” though most other sources agree that “the” racket is a compound sequence mixing two different racket rhythms. Prominent New England dancing master M.B. Gilbert explained it simply as “Pas de Basque sidewise” in 2/4 time.

The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite. The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance. The dance follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

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June 11, 2009

Introducing the racket

The racket, or racquet, is one of the major new couple dances that began appearing in American dance manuals in the early 1880s and lingered into the beginning of the twentieth century. It spread to France in the mid- to late 1890s. I have found no information on its origins or reference to any creator.

The racket is a lively dance that combines sideways slides and quick cuts of the feet back and forth. It can be danced in both galop (2/4) and waltz (3/4) time, though galop time appears to be the default. It was one of the few of the myriad couple dance variations of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to make it into manuals like Allen Dodworth’s Dancing and its Relation to Education and Social Life (New York, 1885, reprinted 1900), which for the most part included only the most commonly-found couple dances. (He did include one of his own invention, the Knickerbocker, and the up-and-coming Boston.)

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June 5, 2009

Round Two Step: A 1903 Dance Mixer

Mixer dances, where all the participants shift partners at intervals, are useful icebreakers at dance events. In A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing (1903), Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman offers a simple mixer for use with the then-fashionable two-step, asserting hopefully that

This dance is rapidly gaining popularity, as it is most enjoyable.

The dancers take partners and hold hands in a grand circle, with each gentleman standing to the left of his partner, and all circle to the left (clockwise). The dance leader calls out a number (3, 7, 12, etc.), and all the dancers face their partners and begin a grand chain, giving right hands to their partners and pulling by, left to the next, right to the next, left to the next, etc. As they move, they count people, starting with their partners as “one.” When they reach the number called out by the leader, each takes ballroom position with that person and two-step until the leader gives a signal (typically a whistle), at which point all the dancers open up into a grand circle and once again circle to the left.

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May 18, 2009

Five Step Schottische
- Era: 1870s(?)-1890s (America)
The Five Step Schottische, as described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his tome of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later by Marguerite Wilson in her oft-reprinted Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899), squeezes five movements, rather than the standard four, into each bar of schottische for an interesting variation which alternates sideways slides and half-turns for a sequence similar to that of waltz variations such as the contemporary Le Metropole (also included in Gilbert’s manual) or the later Five-Step Boston described by Philadelphian Albert Newman in 1914. Putting this combination into schottische rhythm makes for an interesting but not overly complicated dance worth resurrecting by the modern late-19th-century dance reenactor.

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May 9, 2009

An Easy One-Step Sequence

F. Leslie Clendenen’s 1914 compilation, Dance Mad, is full of sequences of varying levels of difficulty for many of the popular dances of the 1910s. This one caught my eye as being a short (sixteen beats) and simple introductory one-step suitable for getting beginners dancing quickly and for teaching the lead for rhythm changes between one-step and two-step. Clendenen gives it no special name or attribution, just “One Step.”

Directions are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite. Starting foot is left for the gentleman and right for the lady. Begin in normal ballroom position, with the gentleman facing along the line of dance.

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April 20, 2009

The Three-Step Boston or English Boston

Concluding a trio of posts on easy hesitation waltzes, here is the simplest hesitation at all: a normal waltz sequence stretched over two bars of music. Albert Newman succinctly described the dance in his 1914 manual, Dances of To-Day:

In reality it is our Standard Waltz, but instead of taking two measures this Boston takes four measures.

What this works out to in practice is that the first step (forward or backward) of each half-turn is held for an entire bar (three counts) and the step to the side and close are done on the first and third counts of the second bar of music, with the overall rhythm being ONE-two-three-FOUR-five-SIX. The three steps taken over two measures give the variation one of its names; I see nothing especially English about this that would account for the other.

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