Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: 1910s

  • Double Grand Chain (a march or cotillion figure)

    I first came across Double Grand Chain when flipping through Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) for interesting cotillion (dance party game) figures.  Like Winthrope, Double Grand Chain is not terribly game-like beyond the basic cotillion setup of dancing with one person and then finding a new partner, but it would make an interesting addition to a grand march for a group of reasonably skilled dancers.

    Double Grand Chain was not original to Walker; it also appeared in all the editions of Allen Dodworth’s Dancing and its relations to education and social life running from 1885 to 1913 (the link is to the 1900 edition), which puts it firmly in the “late Victorian” category.  Since it did reappear in 1912 separately from the Dodworth reprints, I’d still consider it legitimate for a ragtime-era event, and it is sufficiently innocuous in style that I wouldn’t be bothered by its use at a mid-nineteenth-century event either.

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  • Who is Your Partner?

    What would Halloween be without masks?  And what would a cotillion be without at least one figure where people blunder around blindly crashing into each other?

    “Who is Your Partner?” is from St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler and appeared in Original Cotillion Figures (St. Louis, 1900), his collection of figures from himself and other dancing masters.  It is easy enough to run, but it does require props:

    A number of black masks, like those used in lodges, viz: those that have no eyes, in order to completely blindfold the wearer.

    Here’s how it goes:

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  • Exeter Caprice

    The Exeter Caprice is one of a small number of schottisches and schottische-like dances included in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen’s 1914 compilation, Dance Mad, for which Clendenen solicited dances from dancing masters across the United States and in Europe and South America.  One of those who responded was George F. Walters.  The Dance Mad index of dancing masters lists him as based in Waltham, Massachusetts, about sixty miles south of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the famous Phillips Exeter Academy, more commonly known just as “Exeter”.  I suspect that Walters’ Exeter Caprice and Exeter Waltz might be named for the school, either because he taught dance there or because he hoped to.

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  • CD Review: Ragtime Dance Party

    Ragtime Dance Party Cover Ragtime Dance Party is the one and only album released by the Crown Syncopators, a San Francisco-based trio that performs at ragtime music festivals on the West Coast.  I’ve never had the pleasure of dancing to their music in person, which this album makes me very much regret.  Per the title, every single tune is danceable as well as a joy to listen to.  I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys American music and dance of the 1890-1920 era.

    The Crown Syncopators consist of Frederick Hodges (piano), Victoria Tichenor (drums), and Marty Eggers (tuba).  They don’t seem to have a website. but their appearances are listed on Hodges’ event schedule here.  (Updated 12/30/25 because the schedule no longer exists.)

    The CD comes with ten pages of liner notes that contain the background on each piece and reproductions of the original sheet music covers.  Along with familiar favorites like Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe, and James Scott, I was especially pleased to see in the mix a couple of less-familiar female composers, Grace Marie Bolen and Adeline (or Adaline) Shepherd, both of whose careers were cut short by marriage.

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  • CD Review: The Robert E. Lee

    The Robert E. Lee cover art The Robert E. Lee (1997) is a neat little album of solo piano played by the famous musician Bob Milne, who is not only a top-notch ragtime pianist, music historian, and “national treasure” who performed at The Library of Congress in 2004, but also has the astonishing ability to “play” multiple tunes at once in his head, meaning that he can do incredible tricks like playing music in 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 simultaneously.  There’s a fascinating article about his abilities at Mlive.com.

    The CD title and the famous tune “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” both refer to the famous steamship which won a race from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870.

    I have had The Robert E. Lee sitting around for over a decade but only ever used one track, “Trouble in Mind”, regularly, as an interesting change of style for when I DJ for modern blues dancers.  Until I started teaching ragtime more often than usual this year I hadn’t really gone through the rest of the album carefully.  The CD wasn’t recorded specifically for dancing, so some of the pieces don’t have the regular rhythm one would desire, but about half of them are quite good for dancing, a few others are workable, and the piano playing is invariably a joy to listen to even for the less danceable tunes.

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  • Two Easy Mixer Games, 1912

    I recently had a request to teach 1910s-era dance games, so I went digging through early twentieth-century books of cotillion (or “German”) figures looking for some easy mixers that could be explained in a few sentences.  I found two that fit the bill in Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).  That book is one of my favorite sources for the silliest and most extreme figures, but it has plenty of simpler ones as well.

    Neither of these figures require any props or preparation, and they can be taught in moments on the dance floor, a practice actually recommended in the description of the second.

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  • 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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  • Early foxtrot: the drag step

    It’s been quite some time since I’ve written up any early foxtrot variations, so here’s a simple but stylish one from 1914 to add to your repertoire!

    Dancer Joan Sawyer, owner of the Persian Gardens nightclub in New York City, called this the “drag step”, but unlike the drag or draw steps found in other dances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the feet are not just closed heel to heel.  Instead, the closing foot is tucked behind (his) or in front of (hers) the other.  Here’s Sawyer’s description of the drag step and the following “trot”, with the accompanying illustration at left:

    The gentleman slides the left foot out to his left as though he were going to walk sideways.  He then drags his right foot over back of the heel of the left foot, coming up slightly on the toes at the end of the movement, and breaks into a forward “trot” of four steps, gentleman starting the first trot step with is left foot…The lady you see slides her right foot out to her right, she then points the toe of her left foot over in front of her right foot, throwing her weight on to the left foot, then trots backward four steps, sliding the right foot back first.

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  • A Valentine Cotillion

    I return once more, in honor of Valentine’s Day, to H. Layton Walker’s delightful Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), which is always guaranteed to provide me some interesting figures for imaginative dancers.  Christmas was a bit disappointing, as holiday cotillion themes go.  Valentine’s Day seems much more promising, since both cotillions and valentines have the goal of matching up people and thus ought to combine nicely!

    Starting from the top of an evening’s program, Walker does provide a couple of useful suggestions for the grand march.  I noted a few years ago that good leaders could get their marching dancers into formations such as the letters of the alphabet, or other geometric figures.  Hearts, for example, lend themselves easily to being both created and escaped from by lines of dancers.  Walker provided the diagrams at left for what he called a “Heart March Cotillion”, though the shape is so basic that one hardly needs the help.

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  • A St. Louis Hesitation Waltz (1914)

    The generically named One Step Hesitation is a short hesitation waltz sequence that appeared in the second edition of the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis in late 1914.  It is subtitled “As Recommended by St. Louis Association Dancing Masters”, and with no author listed, may have come from the hand of Clendenen himself.

    Since the One Step Hesitation is almost entirely in the slowest possible type of hesitation (one step per bar of music), it calls for very fast waltz music or it will drag badly.  I prefer 180 beats per minute and up for this type of hesitation waltz.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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