I don’t usually write about foxtrot in November, but I don’t usually teach foxtrot in Ukraine in the middle of a war, either, and last month, the dancers of Kyiv’s Vintage Dance Community wanted something for foxtrot that I hadn’t previously described here on Kickery.  Here is the description for their future reference and that of others interested in the variations for the foxtrot of the 1910s.

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At least two versions of a zig-zag sequence appeared in short booklets published in 1914 and 1915:

• The Zig-Zag Step and “Trot”: Joan Sawyer’s How to Dance the Fox Trot (Columbia Graphaphone Company, New York,1914)
• The Zig-Zag Run: Description of Modern Dances as Standardized by the New York Society Teachers of Dancing and approved by the Congress of Dancing Societies of America at meeting held December 27th, 1914, in New York City, N. Y. (American National Association Masters of Dancing, Pittsburgh, 1915)

Sawyer characterized the figure as a “hard one” but also “loads of fun”.  Her description:

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While thinking about mixing foxtrot and maxixe…

The St. Denis Spiral is a minor foxtrot variation from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) which, like the sequences in my previous post, incorporates maxixe styling in the two-step.  Like Lee's Pavlowa Extension, it is named for a famous dancer, in this case Ruth St. Denis.  I am not a scholar of modern dance (theatrical or otherwise), so I have only the most superficial knowledge of her career, but apparently she was indeed noted for incorporating spiral figures, as may be seen in "The Delirium of Senses" from Radha (1906), recorded at Jacob's Pillow in 1941.  I seriously doubt she had anything to do with this foxtrot variation, however; the name is most likely just an homage.

The sequence is just as easy as the other foxtrot-maxixe combinations:

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Maxixe in the foxtrot?  They mixed bits and pieces of every other dance of the ragtime era together, so why not jazz up your foxtrot with a little body sway?

At least two different sources suggest using maxixe-styled two-step in the foxtrot: Joan Sawyer’s How to Dance the Fox Trot (Columbia Graphaphone Company, New York,1914) and Description of Modern Dances, as Standardized by the New York Society Teachers of Dancing and approved by the Congress of Dancing Societies of America at meeting held December 27th, 1914, in New York City, N. Y. (American National Association Masters of Dancing, Pittsburgh, 1915).

I’ll start with Sawyer, since her booklet (dated November 23, 1914), is chronologically earlier.  Her foxtrot figures all consist of a pattern of a unique step or sequence followed by eight trotting steps.  Her third figure, the Maxixe-Glide and “Trot”, starts with four measures of “Maxixe two-step” done moving along the line of dance (gentleman forward, lady backward) without turning.  The two-steps begin with the gentleman’s left foot, lady’s right; feet then alternate as usual

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For no reason other than habit, June is always foxtrot month for me, and despite the general shutdown of dance classes, I’m lucky enough to have a convenient partner at hand for experimentation with new variations.  So let’s look at yet another of the many step-sequences described in Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916)!

The Pavlowa Extension was, of course, named for the famous ballerina Anna Pavlowa (Pavlova), who toured America in the mid-1910s and dipped into social dance choreography with a music-composition contest resulting in a trio of dances published in The Ladies’ Home Journal in early 1915.  She (or her ghostwriter) and (supposedly) members of her troupe also offered opinions and suggestions about dancing the one-step, Boston, and foxtrot.  This variation, however, is not among those even indirectly associated with Pavlova.  It probably was merely named in her honor, or perhaps was inspired by a characteristic movement in her dancing.

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