Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: 1910s

  • Mr. Faurot’s Hesitation Waltz

    This hesitation waltz sequence by Seattle dance teacher George G. Faurot (c1879-1954) was published in both editions of F. Leslie Clendenen’s compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914).  Faurot himself was a native of Lima, Ohio, where his uncle Ben discovered oil and his brother Lee eventually became mayor.  Faurot Park in Lima was donated by Ben and is named for him.

    According to George’s obituary, he fought in the Spanish-American War and then had a career in the oil industry before moving to Seattle, where he ran the Faurot Studio of Dancing with his wife, Nellie, for thirty years.  The Faurots’ residence in the late 1930s is now a historical site in Seattle.  The building that housed their dance studio, the Oddfellows Building, still stands and is still home to a dance studio, Century Ballroom, though the Faurot Ballroom itself seems to have been in the first-floor space which is now the Oddfellows Cafe.

    Interestingly, Lee, before becoming mayor, also seems to have dabbled in dance teaching before ending up in the insurance business and politics.  A family passion?

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  • One for the ponies!

    I've been waiting for most of my life for another horse to win the Triple Crown, and, much to my chagrin, when it finally happened I was working and therefore missed seeing it live even on television, let alone indulging my secret hope to one day see such a thing in person.  Arrgh!

    I will console myself by free-associating to a foxtrot variation: the Cavalry Charge!

    The first thing to be aware of is that Edna Stuart Lee, in her Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916), calls the following sequence "The Pony Trot" and claims that it was the original foxtrot step:

    1234    Four walking steps
    1&2&  Four trots

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  • Fox Trot Hats

    I’ve been looking for something amusing to wind up the centennial year of the foxtrot, and I found it in the November 17, 1914, issue of The Richmond Times-Dispatch: some fashion advice for the foxtrotting ladies in the store advertisement shown at left:

    Fox-Trotting Without a Fox Trot Hat
    is like joy riding on a steam roller.

    How do I follow up a line like that?  I can only suggest reading the rest of the ad (click to enlarge) for more delightfully fulsome language.

    For historical dancers, this is a reminder that during the 1910s, dancing in a hat at an afternoon thé dansant was perfectly proper, though judging by the advertisement, either not everyone agreed or not everyone succeeded in finding a suitable hat:

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  • A Montréal Gavotte, 1918

    The classic schottische of the mid-nineteenth century and its later incarnation, the Barn Dance (a.k.a. the Military Schottische and the Pas de Quatre) had mostly faded from fashionable ballrooms by the late 1910s.  But a few very simple schottisches or schottische-like sequences turn up now and then in dance manuals and on sheet music of the 1910s, often under the name “gavotte”, a musical form with the same 4/4 meter characteristic of the schottische.

    La Gavotte is a short sequence taken from Professor A. Lacasse’s La Danse apprise chez soi, published in Montréal in 1918.  There were many dances called “gavotte” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not all of them in 4/4 time, so while this particular gavotte may have been locally popular in Montréal, it should not be considered any sort of definitive gavotte for the 1910s or any other era.

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  • A 3/4-time grapevine sequence, 1914

    I’ve had sequence dances on my mind recently after some discussion earlier this week, which reminded me of this little sequence from the the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen’s 1914 compilation Dance Mad.  It appears there under the name “American Grapevine Dance” by Anthony J. Giaconia of Springfield, Massachusetts.  I know nothing about Mr. Giaconia except that on June 24, 1912, he was quoted on the front page of The Indianapolis News as one of a convention of dancing masters appalled by dances like the Grizzly Bear and Bunny Hug.  He found some dancing in a park there so disgraceful that it ought to be stopped “for the sake of decency”.

    The Grapevine Dance is so short (only eight bars) that it doesn’t feel long enough to be a sequence dance all on its own, but the two measures in which the dancers move directly into the center of the room and back make it mildly risky to use simply as a variation; moving abruptly back and forth across the line of dance can cause problems for dancers coming up behind.  Doing this from an “inside lane” near the center of the room will be more polite if it is not being done in unison as a sequence dance.

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  • Basic Foxtrots from Edna Lee

    Earlier this year I talked about nine different variations from the handy little booklet Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) in two mini-series, starting here (three posts) and here (two posts).  My choice of sequences may have given the impression that Lee's collection was mostly odd little variations with (often) even odder names (Chaplin Trot, anyone?)  That's because I was skipping over the simplest sequences given by Lee, since I have encountered them elsewhere and written about them, or similar sequences, in earlier posts. 

    Here, I'm going to give a quick rundown of eight very basic sequences that Lee included among her more unusual and/or unique ones so that it is clear that there was a certain basic repertoire overlapping what is found in many other sources.

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  • Hop, hop, foxtrotters!

    Concluding my extended celebration of the foxtrot‘s centennial year: more about the hop-turn!

    A few years ago, I considered hopping in the 1910s foxtrot to be a relatively obscure practice — I’d only ever found one sequence with a hop in it and had only a brief mention in a newspaper article to reassure me that it was not just a one-couple oddity.  But looking through Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916), there are actually several sequences that include hops, including two that are strikingly similar to the previously described Bassett/Elliott hop-turn.

    Here are two more ways to, in the words of the newspaper article, “make our turn with a quick, fast hop” while foxtrotting.

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  • The Castles’ Paul Jones

    In 1914, Victor Records made a celebrity-endorsement deal with Vernon and Irene Castle, “the greatest exponents of Modern Dancing who supervise the making of Victor Dance Records”.  The company put out a little booklet, Victor Records for Dancing, which included short instructions for various couple dances (including the brand-new foxtrot) plus an enthusiastic note from Vernon Castle about the superiority of Victor records and the indispensibility of the Victrola in teaching classes.

    The instructions for each dance were accompanied by a convenient list of suitable Victor recordings.  Tucked at the end of the book were instructions for a country dance and a Paul Jones circle mixer “as taught at the Castle School of Dancing, New York City”.

    In the past, I’ve discussed a very simple 1903 two-step circle mixer and a more complex English Paul Jones from the 1920s.  The Castles’ version is quite similar to the 1903 one, but it’s physically rather livelier while mentally less taxing; the dancers don’t have to count.

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  • Early Foxtrot: The Newburgh

    The Newburgh is a longer and more complicated foxtrot sequence taken from Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  Like her Left Glide, it changes the lead foot against the music, with same opportunities and issues previously discussed for that move.

    As is typical, the gentleman starts on the left foot, moving forward, and the lady on the right foot, moving backward.  The steps below are the gentleman’s steps; reverse everything for the lady.  The numbers are beats, not measures.

    The Newburgh
    12345    five walking steps (left, right, left, right)
    6            cross right over left (lady crosses left behind right)
    7&8       two-step (left-right-left)

    1            cross right over left
 (lady crosses left behind right)
    2&3       two-step (left-right-left)
    4            cross right over left (lady crosses left behind right)
    5&6       two-step (left-right-left)
    7            step side right

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  • Early Foxtrot: Slides & Glides, 1916

    Continuing on with my little celebration of the centennial year of the foxtrot:

    I’ve discussed before how the two-step and sliding sequences similar to the four-slide galop of the nineteenth century were incorporated into the foxtrot in its earliest years.  Other than one 1919 variation from Charles Coll, the two-step sequences described were generally symmetrical, with even numbers of two-steps either in sequence or broken up by walking steps.  Slides were generally done in sets of four.

    Here’s another pair of simple “glides” from Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) that break that pattern with single two-steps and a set of three slides.  The “Right Glide” and “Left Glide” are very accessible variations for foxtrot beginners.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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