Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: One-Step

  • Early Foxtrot: The Minuet Turn

    Keeping with the foxtrot theme, here's one more little sequence for foxtrot or one-step from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  Despite its overt simplicity, it actually manages to present a minor reconstruction issue!  As for the name…well, to be perfectly honest, I see absolutely no connection here to the minuet, any more than I do with Newman's Minuet Tango.  There seems to have been some concept of "minuet" in the 1910s which I have completely failed to grasp.

    The gentleman's steps are given; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers begin in normal ballroom hold, the gentleman facing forward along line of dance and the lady backward.

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  • Early Foxtrot: Quick Dips

    Ah, June, when one turns one's thoughts (and feet) to…weird little foxtrot variations! 

    This time around, let's look at a pair of steps, or rather step-sequences, from Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) that both involve quick dips.  These are actually ever-so-slightly harder to do than the usually run of walks, trots, glides, and two-steps that make up a great deal of the 1910s foxtrot repertoire.  Lee noted that the first of these, The Coney Island Dip, is "very exhilarating and excellent exercise for the lungs."

    The gentleman's steps are given; the lady dances opposite.

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  • The Rag-Time Crawl

    I semi-jokingly call the Rag-Time Crawl “the dance for when I get tired of the Castle Schottische”.  It basically fulfills the same function: easy to dance, accessible to beginners, and comforting to people who are not up to leading and following and enjoy the Macarena-like effect of everyone moving all together in the same pattern.

    My source for the dance is Frank H. Norman’s Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914).  The author is J. B. McEwen of Glasgow, Scotland.  I don’t know a lot about either of these gentlemen, but I can offer a few bits of trivia:

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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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  • Cross Steps in the Early Foxtrot

    Rounding out my little miniseries celebrating the centennial of the first burst of popularity for the foxtrot, here’s another pair of variations from Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916) that each feature a moment when one foot crosses over the other.

    The “Side Swing” starts with the usual four walking steps, followed by a pair of quick-quick-slow moves.  The first quick-quick-slow moves diagonally forward to the left (back to the right for the lady), but instead of being a two-step, the sequence is step forward – cross in front – step forward.  The second quick-quick-slow is an actual two-step, done to the right, with my preference being for a slight diagonal angle rather than directly out toward the wall of the room.  Here’s the gentleman’s step sequence:

    1234    Four walking steps (starting left)
    1&2     Step diagonally forward left, cross right over left, step forward left
    3&4     Two-step (step-close-step, not turning, starting right)

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  • Twinkle, Twinkle: Fast and Slow

    • Era: 1910s
    • Dances: Foxtrot, One-Step, Hesitation Waltz

    2014 marks one hundred years since the foxtrot made its first big splash, so it’s very timely for me to have come across a copy of Edna Stuart Lee’s Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  This is by far the largest single collection of 1910 foxtrot step sequences I’ve ever found in one place, and many of them are completely new to me.

    Lee’s sequences were billed as “suitable for the ballroom, gymnasium, or playground, as well as for private exercise at home, either with or without a partner.”  While several of them match foxtrot variations that I’ve previously discussed, they’re given a poetic new set of names.  Can anyone guess which common sequences Lee endows with names like the Meditation Glide, Barcarolle, and Viola Dana?

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  • Sorority Glide

    Most of the steps in Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) were collected by “author” F. Leslie Clendenen from other dancing masters, but he gives himself credit for the Sorority Glide, a sixteen-bar one-step sequence that he recommends be danced to “Too Much Mustard” or “any One Step music of a similar swing.  It’s a fun little sequence with a very “Castles” feel to it and room for some personal style.  It works as an independent dance or can be plugged into a regular one-step as a variation.

    The dancers begin in a ballroom hold, turned out slightly so both face line of dance.  The dancers need to be far enough apart to make a cross step without crowding.  Weight should be shifted onto the forward (outside) foot, the gentleman’s left and the lady’s right, since the dance starts on the inside foot.

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  • Dixie Swirl

    The Dixie Swirl is a short tango-ish sequence found in F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914).  While it is not actually in the tango section and doesn't really have much of a tango feel, the brief description states that it is to be done to tango music.  It is attributed to Mrs. Nantoinette Ohnmeiss, about whom I've not been able to discover any information.

    The sequence appears at first glance to be eight bars, which is really too short to be interesting:

    2b    Gallop four times along line of dance (slide-close x4)
    2b    Two-step (presumably a full turn)
    4b    Swirl (the spin turn described here)
    Repeat from the beginning

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  • Ballroom Marsupials

    The most popular “animal dances” of the early 1900s appear to have been the Turkey Trot and Grizzly Bear.  But the F. Leslie Clendenen’s compilation manual Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) offers a pair of one-step variations attributed to London dance teacher Walter Humphrey, who apparently found inspiration in the hopping of Australian marsupials.  I’ve never found these variations in any other source, so it’s not clear to me how widespread they ever were.  I would also have placed them a bit earlier, maybe 1908-1910, as by 1914 the animal dance fad was already well past and the smoother, more elegant style of Vernon and Irene Castle was making the one-step acceptable in respectable ballrooms.  It’s possible that Mr. Humphrey and/or English dancers in general had not quite caught up with the latest American dance fads, or that Clendenen was not as fussy in compiling his book as its subtitle, “The Dances of the Day,” suggests.

    For both variations, the dancers both face line of dance.  It’s not clear whether they should retain joined hands in front or open up fully.  I find the latter more graceful, but how much of a priority grace should be while hopping around a ballroom imitating a marsupial is debatable.  Those wishing to study wallaby technique in detail may consult this National Geographic video this video of a wallaby hopping across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  (Edited 11/19/2025 to replace vanished video with a new one.)

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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