On Monday, December 27, 1909, an elaborate cotillon, meaning an evening of dance party games, was given by the McGowan family in the yellow and gold third floor ballroom of their turreted Romanesque “chateau” on Delaware Street in Indianapolis, pictured above in an image courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.

The house and the McGowan family are extremely well-documented. Hugh McGown (1857-1911) was a first-generation American, the son of Irish immigrants, and a self-made man who made a fortune in electric street rail as President of the Indianapolis Traction and Terminal Co. A brief biography may be found here. He and his wife Kate had four daughters: Marjorie, Louise, Frances, and Isabel, who would have been roughly 21, 20, 16, and 14 in 1909.

Since wandering around with small lanterns in a dark room looking for people to dance with also seems like a suitable spooky, or at least entertaining, activity for Halloween balls and cotillion parties, here are another pair of cotillion figures from H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) that feature that very activity!

These are both simple mixer figures in which pairs of ladies and gentlemen must find their designated match, either by number or by name.

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For a change of pace, here’s a leap year-themed cotillion (dance party game) figure from H. Layton Walker’s  Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).  I think the only “leap year” element in it is that the ladies pursue the gentlemen, rather than the reverse.

Here’s the original text:

LEAP YEAR FIGURE
For this figure you will require one more gentleman than you do ladies.  An extra man is required to put on a paper shroud.  This figure can be used for any number of couples, but it is always necessary to have an extra gentleman up.  Couples up and dance.  When they have danced a little while, form a circle, and grand right and left, the leader getting into the circle and when all dance the leader must secure one of the ladies.  This will leave one of the gents out.  He is “It,” and goes to the centre to receive this paper suit.  The ladies all receive a large ring having a tissue covering over it.  Get another lady who is not in the figure, so that you will also have an odd lady up.  She also receives one of the hoops.  Now ask the ladies to catch a man.  As there are not enough men for all the ladies the one who does not succeed in getting a man will have to contend [sic] herself by dancing with the dummy.

It took me a moment to sort this out because of how badly written the instructions are.  The first three sentences can be ignored.  Here’s how it works:

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There are plenty of cotillions – in the sense of “nineteenth-century dance games”, not “eighteenth-century French square dances” – that are some variation on “form a square or longways set and do a quadrille figure or country dance”.  “La Contre Danse” is an interesting take on this theme from W. Gilbert Newell, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was published in St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler’s compilation, Original Cotillion Figures (St. Louis, 1900).  It caught my eye because of the unusual formation: couple facing couple across a longways set, as in the American contra “The Tempest“, the English “Polka Contre Danse“, or quadrille figures done in columns rather than squares.  I can’t be certain that this is the only cotillion figure using this formation — hundreds of them were published from the early nineteenth into the early twentieth century, and I can’t claim to have looked at them all — but it’s the only one I’ve found so far.

“La Contre Danse” is relatively complicated as figures done in sets go.  It opens and closes with two-step done in couples, and in between there is a brief march to set up the longways set before the actual contra/country/contre danse figures begin.  Here’s how it works:

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Double Quadrille is a cotillion (dance party game) figure from H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), though the “game” element is extremely limited.  The original setup is not even a standard cotillion opening with couples dancing and then separating to find new partners; instead, each couple seeks another couple.

The language and timing of the figure are ambiguous, and I’ve found no other source to clarify things.  So I’ve had to make some guesses and minor tweaks in order to create something that actually works.

Here’s the original language from Walker:

DOUBLE QUADRILLE.
Four couples perform a tour de valse. Each couple selects another couple and they form a double quadrille; the head couples right and left; half sides the same. Ladies chain; all the ladies forward four steps, turn and face partners; gentlemen take the right hand of partners and left hand of lady on their left; all balance; the ladies facing outward, gentlemen inward; turn partners to places. The figure is danced over to regain places. Signal for all to waltz to places.

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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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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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Once more, some cotillions, this time to wrap up the year with midwinter cheer!  As with the North Pole figures, these are taken from H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Buffalo, New York, 1912).  This trio of figures is pure fun, however, with no special historical significance.  Three figures aren’t enough to comprise an entire party on their own, but mixed with standard, non-winter-themed figures, they add a nice seasonal touch.

But first, let’s let’s decorate the ballroom with a winter theme…

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In honor of the freezing cold winter weather, I’m returning to H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912) for a pair of cotillion figures themed around the then-current news of the attempts by explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to be the first to reach the North Pole in 1908-1909.  At the time Walker’s book was written, there was a lively conflict going on between the two men as to who could claim the polar laurels.  Since then, both accounts have been discredited to varying degrees, but it seems to still be something of an ongoing debate among scholars.  There’s an interesting account of the two expeditions and the contemporary debate at the Smithsonian Magazine website, which I recommend for anyone wanting more historical perspective.

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Final cotillion figure for the month!  Boarding House straddles the line between comedy and horror, making it perfect for Halloween.  Along with being probably the single weirdest cotillion figure I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot, it’s also the most elaborate, requiring the construction of a special trick table along with props and costumes for some of the dancers.  The figure is taken from St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler’s 1900 compilation Original Cotillion Figures, in which it was attributed to Brooklyn dancing master William Pitt Rivers.  After reading through this figure, I’m not sure I’d have wanted to have him as my dancing master!

I’ll include the full original description below, but since it is rather lengthy, I’ll start with the requirements and process for the figure.

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The description of the Red Ear Party, or Harvest Home Party, appears in Emily Rose Burt’s Entertaining Made Easy (New York, 1919).  It was not a full-scale fancy dress ball, but an autumn/harvest-themed ball put on by, according to the book, a group of high school seniors as the opening event of their final year.  Along with normal dancing of the era, it featured a series of novelty dances which were effectively low-key cotillions.  Did the event really take place or was it imagined by Ms. Burt just for the book?  Hard to say.  But I’m impressed with the imagination and industry either displayed by the actual students or expected by Ms. Burt to be achievable by high school kids.  I wish my teenage school dances had been like this!

The red ear of the title was not a body part but an ear of corn.  The significance is said to go back to a colonial tradition in which whoever found the red ear at a corn husking party would get to kiss the girl of his choice.  (You can see an example of one red ear among a lot of normal ones here.)  In this case, finding the (faked) red ear was used to select a “queen” for the party.

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Coming back to cotillion figures, and sliding even further down the weirdness scale, here’s a figure that combines playing doctor and still more wacky costumes!  The source, once again, is the ever-delightful Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures by H. Layton Walker (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912).

Like the Garden Figure and Stocking Auction figures, Sanitarium is a partner-choosing mixer, but with a much more elaborate setup.  Here’s Walker’s description:

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Moving on from fancy dress balls, here are a pair of cotillion figures which actually involve some degree of costuming, at least for loose definitions of the concept.  Both figures are taken from H. Layton Walker’s Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), source of an endless supply of delightfully weird figures.  There are actually Halloween-themed figures in Walker’s book, but they’re quite dull by comparison with these two!

Both figures are simple mixers, with either the ladies or the gentlemen selecting partners from a group of opposite-sex dancers.  Dozens of figures of this sort were published over the years, but these two take the concept to a whole new level by having the dancers put on some sort of silly costume during the ball itself, presumably right over their normal evening dress.

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