Long, long, ago I published a reconstruction of the mid-19th century American contra (country) dance published as “Harvest Home” in some of Elias Howe’s dance compilations. I have nothing new to add to that reconstruction, but as I’ve collated more and more contra dances of that era, I’ve found the same figures under a couple of other names in other source, including one predating Howe’s publication of it, with a suggestive pattern of differences.
(more…)Category: Country Dance
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Flower Girl’s Dance
Flower Girl’s Dance is an American Civil War-era contra dance that I remember dancing way back in the early 1990s when I first started doing mid-nineteenth-century dance. But the version we did does not actually match that found in any source I’ve ever seen. And it’s easy to see why: the versions given in the sources don’t actually work very well. And now that I’ve reconstructed the California Reel, I have a little theory about why that is.
The earliest sources I have for Flower Girl’s Dance are Elias Howe’s two 1858 books, the Pocket Ball-Room Prompter and the Complete Ball-Room Handbook. I strongly suspect that all the later sources were copying to some degree from Howe. So let’s look at Howe’s instructions:
FLOWER GIRL’S DANCE.
(Music: Girl I left behind me.)
Form as for Spanish Dance. All chassa to the right, half balance–chassa back, swing four half round–swing four half round and back–half promenade, half right and left–forward and back all, forward and pass to next couple (as in the Haymakers).There are some minor differences of spelling and punctuation, but the wording is essentially the same across almost forty years of Howe publications. Taken at face value with the hash marks setting off eight-bar musical strains, this yields a 40-bar dance:
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California Reel
There’s the famous Virginia Reel. There’s a Kentucky Reel. Why not a California Reel?
Unlike those other two reels, which are full-set dances, the California Reel is a normal progressive contra dance in the “Spanish Dance” format: couple facing couple, either down a longways set or in a circle. For this particular dance, a line of couples will work better.
I have five sources for California Reel, though two of them are simply later editions of other sources:
- The ball-room manual, containing a complete description of contra dances, with remarks on cotillions, quadrilles, and Spanish dance, revised edition, presumed to be by William Henry Quimby (Belfast, Maine, 1856; introduction signed W. H. Q)
- The ball room guide : a description of the most popular contra dances of the day, (Laconia, New Hampshire, 1858)
- The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons, with remarks on quadrilles and Spanish dance, vest pocket edition, presumed to be by William Henry Quimby (Belfast, Maine, and Boston, 1863) (later edition of first source above, again signed W. H. Q.)
- Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1882)
- Howe’s New American Dancing Master by Elias Howe (Boston, 1892)
All of them have the same language in the description, varying only in punctuation and spelling. I am reasonably sure that the text in most of these sources was copied from either the 1856 source or some earlier source.
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Waltzing Around
A recent mailing list discussion centered on how to quickly teach people to do a "waltz-around", the style of country dance progression in which two couples waltz around each other once and a half times. This is most famously part of the mid- to late-nineteenth-century Spanish Dance, as well as other American waltz contra dances (such as the German Waltz and Bohemian Waltz). It dates back at least as far as the late 1810s to early 1820s in England, when Spanish dances were an entire genre of country dances in waltz time, and both they and ordinary waltz country dances featured this figure, sometimes under the names "poussette" or "waltze". I expect it goes even further back on the European continent, but I haven't yet pursued that line of research.
As a dancer, the waltz-around has always been one of those figures that I just…do. I'd observed that it's difficult for beginners to master the tight curvature of the circle and making one and a half circles in only eight measures, but as an experienced waltzer, I've long been able to do it instinctively. And I'd never broken down precisely what I did or worked out how to explain it to others.
So I suppose it's about time!
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Trips to Paris
This post is for Allison, Graham, and Alan, who know and care.
If I expect to get anything done in my life, I cannot spend my time wandering around the net getting irritated by the dance history errors. But I do pay attention when they arrive by email. So I noticed when a mailing list query about how best to dance “A Trip to Paris” at a Jane Austen ball appeared in my inbox. Happily, I was neither the first nor the last list member to jump in with some version of “That dance is from Walsh, from 1711, and does not belong at a Jane Austen ball!” (Jane Austen lived from 1775-1817, and her dancing days would have started in the early 1790s.)
I did get intrigued by one comment in the ensuing discussion: that the dance had been “republished by Thomas Cahusac in 24 Country Dances for 1794” and therefore might have been danced by Jane Austen. That’s a terrifically specific citation — hurray! — but I instantly doubted it, since (1) very few dances or tunes of the earlier style were reprinted that late (young people, then and now, not being particularly into dancing their great-grandparents’ dances), and (2) I already knew there were other tunes called “A Trip to Paris” and other dance figures printed with them. As another list member pointed out, it’s a very generic sort of title.
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Another Country Dance Gallopade
- Era: 1830s, England
This dance is one of a pair of country dance gallopades published in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition). They have no names or specific music, just numbers. I've previously discussed the second one; now here's the first. It's a very straightforward reconstruction.
Here are the original instructions:
No. 1. (4 parts)
The whole of the party arranged in the same way as for a country dance stand facing the top of the room, and chassez croise all with partners — then facing your partners, all advance, retire, and back to back — first and second couples hands across and back again — first lady pass outside the ladies to the bottom of the dance, the first gent. at the same time going down outside of the gents. and turn partner with both hands, remaining at bottom.
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Setting a higher standard
Moving on from what ought to be the rock-bottom minimal standard for anything calling itself a “Jane Austen ball”, even in the modern English country dance community, let me talk a little about higher standards, and what you’d want to do if you were interested in actually approaching as close as is practical to period practice. I’ve made two lists, one of what I consider to be important and one of elements that I do not consider as critical. Some items are characteristics of the dancing itself, and some have to do with ball format, because the latter is just as important as the former in establishing a period atmosphere and breaking people out of the modern mindset.
Modern English country dance groups are unlikely to want to try most (or any!) of this, but I hope it’s interesting to see how different an experience a ball would have been two hundred years ago. Some people have the bizarre idea that by suggesting that using “dances” (in the modern sense) from Jane Austen’s lifetime for something called a “Jane Austen ball”, I am somehow trying to impose actual historical practices on them. No, really, not!
For simplicity’s sake, I’ve limited this to just things pertaining to country dancing, rather than trying to cover the entire range of possible dance forms for either Austen herself or the actual decade of the Regency.
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Harvest Home
- Era: American, late 1850s-early 1860s
In commemoration of the American Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a seasonally appropriate dance from the American Civil War era, a country dance for a set of six couples.
While I have not done a comprehensive search, I appear to have instructions for “Harvest Home” only in a pair of dance manuals by Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862), which include far more country dances than is typical of other dance manuals of the time period. New England to this day retains a stronger country dance tradition, in the form of modern contra dance, than most other parts of the United States.
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What Did Jane Austen Dance?
Since early 19th century (“Regency”) dance is one of my particular specialties, I get many questions that boil down to either “what did Jane Austen dance?” or “did Jane Austen dance _____?” So let’s see what I can do for a general answer.
I can divide things loosely into three categories: what we know she danced, what she might have danced, and what she didn’t dance.
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Light Dragoon
- Era: 1850s-1860s America
“Light Dragoon” is an easy mid-19th century American country (contra) dance, one of a lengthy list of contra/country dances given in two manuals written by Elias Howe. In one of the two, it is cryptically labeled “Pinkerton;” possibly this is the name of the choreographer of the dance. It is performed in a longways set of any length, though four to six couples is easiest. All couples are “proper,” with the men standing to the left of their partners when all are facing the top of the room.
