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).
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!
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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’.”
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The New Yorker
Another guilty-pleasure disco-era line dance! This is one I’ve actually used regularly as an easy cool-down dance at the end of my own practices for the last couple of years. The source is The Official Guide to Disco Dance Steps by Jack Villari & Kathleen Sims Villari, 1978. There’s no special music for this or any other line dance, but I often use either Wild Cherry’s "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" or Donna Summers’ "Bad Girls". The only thing even mildly unusual about the dance itself is that instead of quarter-turns after each repetition there are half-turns.
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Hot Chocolate
I try to remember that history (dance or otherwise) didn't actually stop sometime before I was born, so today I'm flashing back to 1978 and the era of disco line dances and, happily, a flood of disco dance manuals. I still find disco music very danceable, so ever so often I play around with reconstructing a few line dances to use as warmups or cool-downs at my own dance practices.
Here's a simple one: Hot Chocolate. It's only sixteen beats long, which is a very short repeat for a line dance. This may not be the easiest line dance ever, but it's got to be high on the list! The dance might have been inspired by the group of the same name, probably best known for the mid-'70s hit song "You Sexy Thing." The source is Let's Disco, no author given, published in 1978 by K-tel International, Inc.
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How Many Times Do We Play That Tune?
One of those questions I get asked all the time by musicians and others is “how many times through the tune for this dance?” The reference is to progressive longways country dances, which were the dominant social dance form in Europe and America from the mid-17th century through the early 19th century and are still enjoying widespread popularity in various living tradition and revival forms.
Modern English country dance and contra practice is for all couples to start the dance simultaneously, and the modern answer to the repeats question would be as many times as needed for everyone to enjoy the dance and fewer times than it would take for people to get bored. Modern Scottish (RSCDS) practice differs in that their dances are generally performed in short sets and have a fixed number of repeats. But if you truly wish to perform country dances in the historical style, it’s a bit more complex!