Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Country Dance

  • CD Review: Grandview Victorian Orchestra

    I ordered the Grandview Victorian Orchestra‘s CD Elegant Music from Times Gone By in the wake of a pleasant email exchange with musical director John Reading about quadrille music last autumn.  The album is a mix of country (contra) dance medleys of various sorts mixed with a few other tunes and played on an interesting instrumental mix of piano, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, bodhran, shaker, banjo, and acoustic bass.  I’m not sure about the acoustic bass, but the other instruments are legitimate for late nineteenth-century America and provide a more “rural” sound than most of the music I use, very appropriate for country dance tunes.

    The music mix is definitely from “times gone by”, though not all of those times are actually Victorian and will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis for historical events.  The arrangements are really lovely, though, and it makes a great listening CD even if not every track is strictly correct and/or usable for historical dancing.

    My comments on the individual tracks follow.

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  • A Victorian “Sir Roger de Coverley”

    Several years ago I wrote up a description of a version of Sir Roger de Coverley from the early nineteenth century and talked a little about the background of the tune and the association of the dance with Charles Dickens’ famous novel, A Christmas Carol.
    Over time, Sir Roger de Coverley mutated in various ways, and I promised back then to describe some of them.  Better five years late than never, here’s another version, a “modernized” English one from the mid-nineteenth century which moves along much more briskly than the earlier version, even with a fairly lengthy set.  According to Mrs. Nicholas Henderson, who seems to have been the first to publish this version, the country dance was generally in decline in the English ballroom by the early 1850s, but Sir Roger de Coverley was an exception:
    To make amends for the fashionable dereliction and banishment of the old favourites of “Merrie Englande,” it is usual to conclude the evening’s festivities with one particular species of Country Dance, called “Sir Roger de Coverley.”  It has of late enjoyed considerable vogue, and is patronised by her Majesty, at her own entertainments.  We give it as at present danced at the Palace, somewhat modernised and adapted to the prevailing taste.

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  • Double Scotch Reel

    Double Scotch Reel does not seem to be Scotch and, as I reconstruct it, does not actually include any reels (heys).  It is a trio contra (three facing three in long lines own the room) which I have found only in one source: the Gems of the Ball Room Call Book published by E. T. Root & Sons in Chicago in 1896.  The Gems call book appears to have been published specifically as dance calls for quadrilles and contra dances to go with the tunes in a series of music books called Gems of the Ball Room also published by Root.

    The contra dance figures in Gems have some noticeable variations from those found in New England manuals such as those of Elias Howe, which might indicate regional variations between the northeast and midwest or might be simple carelessness on the part of the editor.  The language and format of the different figures makes it obvious that they were pulled from different sources, so I suspect that somewhere there is another source for Double Scotch Reel, and that the collator of dances for Gems copied it exactly.

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  • Figure Four?

    In a post a while back on the Regency “figure eight” and the many meanings of the term “figure” in that era, I mentioned a joking suggestion made by a guest at one of my Regency balls that a half figure eight should be called a “figure four”.  Much to my astonishment, while pursuing some research on American country dance of this era, I actually found a figure four!

    The figure is in an American manual published in 1808 in upstate New York, in the figure given for the tune “Flowers of Glasgow”:

    Flowers of Glasgow
    First couple figure four with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, lead up, hands round with third couple, and right and left at top.
        — A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances, Otsego, NY, 1808.

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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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  • Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball

    “In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches.”

    So begins the famous description of Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas Eve ball in Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol, the full text of which with the original illustrations, including the one shown at left (click to enlarge), may be found at Project Gutenberg.

    This is a fun example of, at least, a Victorian writer’s conception of a late 18th century ball which, though given by a successful businessman, is very much of the middle and lower classes rather than of the nobility.  Given that Dickens’ family was not wealthy (at one point they ended up in a debtors’ prison), he may have been writing more from personal experience in London in the 1830s than, say, careful research about ballroom practices several decades earlier. So while this is a useful historical document for dance history, which period it is useful for is not entirely clear.

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  • Down East Breakdown

    • Era: late 1850s-1860s, America (New England)

    Down East Breakdown is an unusual Civil War-era American contra dance: unlike most of them, it is done in “mescolanze,” or four-facing-four, formation.  I have directions for it only in two manuals by Boston musician Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858), and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  Unlike many contra dances of the mid-century, it does not seem to have been picked up by later writers.

    The name of the dance is rather interesting.  “Down east,” in a New England context, refers to eastern Maine.  A “breakdown” in this era was a type of solo dance, like clogging, which was particularly associated with slave dancing and minstrelsy, as may be seen in works like Jig, Clog, and Breakdown Dancing Made Easy (New York, 1873).  An illustration at the American Antiquarian Society website, taken from the January 31, 1863, edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, shows “contraband children” dancing a breakdown.  The dance itself does not incorporate any kind of stepping or anything other than perfectly typical figures, however.

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  • Bricklayer’s Hornpipe

    • Era: 1850s-1890s, America (New England)

    Here’s an easy American contra dance of the Civil War era found in three Boston sources.  Two are manuals by Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858), and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862); the third is Professor L.H. Elmwell’s Prompter’s Pocket Instruction Book (Boston, 1892).

    The figures for the dance, as given by Elmwell:

    First couple cross over inside below second couple (4); Up on the outside and turn partners to places (4); First couple down the centre, back and cast off (8); First lady swing second gent (4); First gent swing second lady (4); Right and left (8).

    The earlier instructions from the two manuals by Howe are virtually identical except that he describes the second move as “up on the outside swing partner to place”, a distinction I will address below, and the swings of the first lady/second gentleman and first gentleman/second lady as “quite round”.

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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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  • Right & left: hands or not?

    By the mid-nineteenth century, the only American dance manuals that contain large quantities of contradances are those from the New England area.  Others may have a few here and there, but not the pages and pages of them, or entire manuals of nothing but contras.  And, alas for reconstructors looking back 150 years later, the authors simply don’t bother to explain how to do specific figures.  Presumably, everyone knew.

    For most figures this isn’t a particular problem; they’re self-evident from the name or unchanged from earlier eras.  But there is one figure that is especially ambiguous to dance historians, and that is “right and left” or “rights and lefts”.  The major reason for the ambiguity is good old Thomas Wilson, a dancing master in early nineteenth-century London and a prolific author.  Wilson wrote some of the most useful books on English country dance in all of dance history, with explanations, diagrams, and occasionally even steps for each figure.  But he had a somewhat unusual take on right and left.

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  • Gothic Ancestry: A Country Dance Gallopade

    • Era: 1830s, England

    A year or so ago I published a discussion and reconstruction of the 1862 country dance gallopade known as The Gothic Dance and mentioned that there was a very similar dance in London dancing master J. S. Pollock’s c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  I’ve taught this dance at the few 1830s events I’ve had an opportunity to run, but have not previously published a reconstruction.

    The original instructions for the dance, one of a pair of country dance gallopades with numbers but no titles, are as follows:

    No. 2.     (4 parts) 

        All advance, retire, and cross over, changing places with partners — advance, retire, and cross over back again — first and second couples right and left — first couple gallopade down the middle to the bottom of the dance, and remain at the bottom.

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  • Go Figure!

    At our recent Regency Assembly, one of the dancers challenged my call of a “half figure eight” in a country dance, asking why it wasn’t called a “figure four”.  Casey, being an experienced dancer, knew exactly why, but he has excellent comic timing, and the comment broke up the room for a moment.

    A geekier question would be why I was using the term “half figure eight” rather than the more typical plain “half figure”.  That was for added clarity for modern dancers, who may not be as familiar with the nuances of Regency terminology, in which a sentence like “The figure of the dance is a double figure made up of five figures, the first being the figure” makes perfect sense.  Since it doesn’t for everyone, let’s figure out all those different usages of “figure”!

    Although every Country Dance is composed of a number of individual Figures, which may consist of “set and change sides,” “whole Figure at top,” “lead down the middle, up again,” “allemande,” “lead through the bottom,” “right and left at top,” &c. yet the whole movement united is called the Figure of the Dance.
    — Thomas Wilson, in The Complete System of English Country Dancing, London, c1815.

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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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  • A Regency “Sir Roger de Coverley”

    In honor of the season…

    In his Complete System of English Country Dancing, published circa 1815, Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson proclaimed of the dance “Sir Roger De Coverley” that it was

    composed expressly for a finishing Country Dance, about 100 years ago, and derived its name from Addison’s Sir Roger De Coverley; so frequently mentioned by him in his popular Essays in the Spectator, and is the only whole Dance given in this System. The Figures of which it is composed being permanent and unalterable, and thereby differing in its construction from all other Country Dances.

    and explained its use as the final dance of the evening (or early morning, given the length of balls of the era):

    At all Balls properly regulated, this Dance should be the finishing one, as it is calculated from the sociality of its construction, to promote the good humour of the company, and causing them to separate in evincing a pleasing satisfaction with each other.

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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.

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  • Holly Berry

    • Era: late 1850s onward

    “Mrs. Henderson has introduced this dance in compliance with the request of pupils and friends, who were at a loss for a cheerful country dance in which all might join without previous instruction in the fashionable dances.”

    Holly Berry is a short set dance apparently composed by London dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson in the 1850s.  Its first known appearance is in the second edition of her Etiquette for Dancing, published in the 1850s.  The dance was also included in Elias Howe’s American dancing master and ball-room prompter, published in Boston in 1862, which appears on the Library of Congress website here.  Howe’s manual, unusually, includes a specific credit to Mrs. Henderson.

    The dance is reminiscent of the galopade country dances of the 1830s and was perhaps seen as too old-fashioned in style by the mid-19th century.  It does not appear to have been commonly reprinted and probably was not wildly popular.  But it makes an interesting change of pace in a Victorian or American Civil War-era reenactment ballroom.  (Edited 10/17/25 to add: Despite its inclusion in Howe’s book, I’ve no real evidence of it being danced in America and would not include it at a specifically American-themed ball.)

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  • Country Dances, Two by Two

    In the comments to a previous post of mine on the realities of Austen-era country dancing, alison[sic] asked about a scene in Pride and Prejudice:

    …when describing the ball to Mr Bennet, Mrs Bennet refers to the dances by what I assumed were the time signatures: “Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifths with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger—”  Or does this indicate some sort of dance configuration?

    The short answer is that this is the way dances were organized at that time: with each partner, you would perform two dances in series before taking a rest and changing partners.  Thomas Wilson, a noted dancing master (and prolific author) in London during the first quarter of the 19th century, wrote that:

    “When the Ball commences, the company should not leave their places, or rest, till after the second Dance.  Should the sets be short, they may Dance three Dances before they rest.”
    — A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816

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  • How Many Times Do We Play That Tune?

    One of those questions I get asked all the time by musicians and others is “how many times through the tune for this dance?”  The reference is to progressive longways country dances, which were the dominant social dance form in Europe and America from the mid-17th century through the early 19th century and are still enjoying widespread popularity in various living tradition and revival forms.

    Modern English country dance and contra practice is for all couples to start the dance simultaneously, and the modern answer to the repeats question would be as many times as needed for everyone to enjoy the dance and fewer times than it would take for people to get bored.  Modern Scottish (RSCDS) practice differs in that their dances are generally performed in short sets and have a fixed number of repeats.  But if you truly wish to perform country dances in the historical style, it’s a bit more complex!

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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