As with setting, there are a number of different step sequences available for dancers to use in the Regency-era quadrille figure Traversez (cross over), in which a lady and the gentleman opposite her exchange places. Traversez appears most notably in L’Été, the second figure of the first set of French quadrilles, and in the many versions of the Finale figure which incorporate L’Été. Below I will give a sample of five of the easier step sequences that may be used to dance Traversez. This is not an exhaustive list of all the period sequences I have for this move, but it should suffice for most dancers.
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!
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Eight Easy Setting Sequences for Regency-Era French Quadrilles
I rarely have the opportunity to teach a wide range of Regency-era setting sequences, but there are dozens of them extant and suitable for use in French quadrilles such as the first set. Using variant setting sequences when setting to one’s partner is one of three ways to jazz up the oft-danced first set (the other two being using more exotic sequences for the other figures and changing the figures themselves) as well as in other French quadrilles for the setting part of the omnipresent “Balancez et un tour de mains” (set and turn your partners) figure.
The following selection of eight four-bar setting sequences is drawn from two sources in particular: the Scottish manuscript Contre Danses à Paris 1818 and the useful Elements of the Art of Dancing by Alexander Strathy (Edinburgh, 1822). Curiously, the best sources for quadrille steps other than the actual French manuals come from Scotland — the Auld Alliance revived in dance!
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Holly Berry
- Era: late 1850s onward
“Mrs. Henderson has introduced this dance in compliance with the request of pupils and friends, who were at a loss for a cheerful country dance in which all might join without previous instruction in the fashionable dances.”
Holly Berry is a short set dance apparently composed by London dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson in the 1850s. Its first known appearance is in the second edition of her Etiquette for Dancing, published in the 1850s. The dance was also included in Elias Howe’s American dancing master and ball-room prompter, published in Boston in 1862, which appears on the Library of Congress website here. Howe’s manual, unusually, includes a specific credit to Mrs. Henderson.
The dance is reminiscent of the galopade country dances of the 1830s and was perhaps seen as too old-fashioned in style by the mid-19th century. It does not appear to have been commonly reprinted and probably was not wildly popular. But it makes an interesting change of pace in a Victorian or American Civil War-era reenactment ballroom. (Edited 10/17/25 to add: Despite its inclusion in Howe’s book, I’ve no real evidence of it being danced in America and would not include it at a specifically American-themed ball.)
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Wrestling with Belle Brandon
(Note: since this post was written, I’ve expanded my research on this figure and written a follow-up post, Revisiting Chassé Out, which discusses further sources and slightly alters my conclusion about the performance of the chassé out figure.)
Recently my English friend and fellow dance teacher/reconstructor Colin Hume asked on the English Country Dance mailing list for help on some American dances he plans to teach later this month at a festival. He posted his notes (the final version is now up here) and asked for advice, since he’s not a specialist on historical American dance. I do a lot with quadrilles (French, American, English, Spanish, etc.) so I pounced on the challenge of the 1858 set he proposed to use, the Belle Brandon Set. This five-figure quadrille is drawn from Howe’s Ball-Room Handbook (Boston, 1858) by Massachusetts dancing master and music publisher Elias Howe.
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A Waltz Quadrille (1893)
By the end of the 19th century, quite a number of quadrilles were being published that didn’t follow the earlier form of having multiple separate figures. Although this dance does have two distinct dance parts, the original instructions (which may be seen here) are clear that they should be treated as one long figure:
Play an ordinary waltz and do not stop between the numbers.
The source of the dance is The Prompter’s Handbook by J.A. French, published in Boston in 1893. I haven’t looked for any other sources for this particular set of figures – it’s a trivial little quadrille which I reconstructed in order to have a late-evening set dance that was easy and provided an excuse for plenty of waltzing.
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Another Note on the Early Foxtrot
While searching through a periodicals index I came across an interesting little article that neatly summarizes my previous three foxtrot posts. “How to Dance the Fox Trot” was published in the Los Angeles Times on October 18, 1914. It commends the dance as
the most simple of all the new dances. If you were discouraged when you tackled the tango or maxixe, here is a dance that every one can dance and enjoy with practically no mental exertion.
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The Mistletoe Hesitation
The Mistletoe Hesitation is a lovely little sixteen-bar hesitation waltz sequence originally published in F. Leslie Clendenen’s Dance Mad, or the dances of the day (St. Louis, 1914), a collection of dances and dance moves borrowed liberally from other dance teachers and manuals. The Mistletoe is attributed to M.W. Cain and is one of the earliest uses I have found of a twinkle step.
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Fancy Little Foxtrot
This is a nifty little move from the short Bassett/Elliott film, “The Much Talked About ‘Fox Trot’ ” (dated 1916) and is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a 1910s foxtrot: it actually has a hop. A hop in the foxtrot! That should startle anyone watching you. The sequence isn’t terribly difficult and should be accessible once a dancer is past the complete-novice stage.
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Quick-Quick-Slow: The Two-Step Infiltrates the Foxtrot
In my previous foxtrot post I covered the basic walking and trotting patterns of the early foxtrot of the 1910s. These patterns are characterized by alternating series of slow (S) or quick (Q) steps, simple traveling interspersed with occasional sideways glides or half-turns, and consistently starting on the same foot (gentleman’s left, lady’s right). This simple foxtrot was complicated almost immediately by variations of rhythm, most notably the “quick-quick-slow” (QQS, or “one-and-two (pause)”) rhythm of the 19th-century two-step and polka. This post will discuss some of the variations introduced in the pre-1920 foxtrot as described by dancing masters Maurice Mouvet (1915) and Charles Coll (1919) and demonstrated by Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott on film (1916).
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Basic Walking & Trotting Patterns in the 1910s Foxtrot
“What particular resemblance does the gait of a fox have to this dance?”
— spectator watching trotters, as quoted in Maurice’s Art of Dancing, 1915It’s a reasonable question. The foxtrot evolved so rapidly after its debut in 1913-1914 that it can be difficult to sort out the earliest versions of the dance and derive an accurate picture of the foxtrot as danced in the 1910s.
Directions for dancing the foxtrot first began appearing in print in
1914. While it did not appear in Vernon and Irene Castle’s 1914 work, Modern Dancing, the Castles did include it that year in the booklet Victor Records for Dancing. Two brief descriptions were also published in F. L. Clenenden’s compendium, Dance Mad, also published in 1914, in St. Louis. In 1915, Maurice Mouvet published his description of the foxtrot in Maurice’s Art of Dancing, followed in 1919 by Charles Coll in Dancing Made Easy (link is to the 1922 reprint).In addition to these written sources, a brief silent film clip dated 1916 shows dance instructors Clay Bassett and Catherine Elliott demonstrating “The Much Talked About ‘Fox Trot’.”