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.
Category: 1910s
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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’.”
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The Half & Half: Basic Traveling Steps
- Era: 1910s
The half and half, a hesitation waltz danced in 5/4 time, was one of those novelties that appeared and vanished quickly in 1914. There may be as many people alive now who know how to dance it as ever danced it in its own era! It is also handicapped by having very few surviving pieces of music in the right time signature. Today’s experienced historical social dancers can probably hum the eponymous “Half and Half” from memory. Sources describing the dance are equally difficult to come by; I have only three in my collection, though one of them, Dance Mad, generously provides four separate descriptions.
Click here to listen to a half and half tune in 5/4 time.
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Hesitate, Hesitate, Hesitate!
- Era: 1910s
- Dance: One-Step
In his 1914 manual, Dances of To-day, Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman describes three different hesitations suitable for the one-step or Castle walk. In one description he notes that a hesitation is
…most practical, especially when one finds himself in a decidedly congested position, surrounded on all sides by merry dancers…it is the same as marking the time of the music, as the dancers execute the movement sur la place (on the spot).
Because of this practicality, hesitations are one of the first things I teach new dancers of the one-step. Here are Newman’s three hesitations for your dancing pleasure!
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Corte Mad
- Era: 1910s
- Dance: tango
In the interest of not losing my mind, I’m going to be writing more
short posts interspersed with the longer articles that cover entire
dances. Today, a lovely little move for your 1910s tango.Many teachers labor under the impression that the “Argentine” consists of one dance only, which is not true, it is a dance of great variety of movements…The Argentine of today embraces about as many varieties as there are dancers, owing perhaps, to the natural desire of our American dancers to be “inventors.”
— F. Leslie Clendenen, Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, St. Louis, Missouri, 1914 -
The Overlooked Eight Step
- Era: 1910s
- Dances: one-step, tango, half & half, hesitation waltz
Why, in fifteen-plus years of dancing ragtime socially, had I never done the eight step? It’s not an obscure step; it’s the first variation world-famous dance couple Vernon and Irene Castle give for the one-step and is also mentioned by them in their descriptions of the tango, half and half, and hesitation waltz. And yet somehow I’d neither danced it nor reconstructed it until late 2007 when I was looking for interesting one-step moves for some new dance students.
