Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Country Dance

  • 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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  • 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.

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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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  • 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

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