Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: One-Step

  • An Easy One-Step Sequence

    F. Leslie Clendenen’s 1914 compilation, Dance Mad, is full of sequences of varying levels of difficulty for many of the popular dances of the 1910s.  This one caught my eye as being a short (sixteen beats) and simple introductory one-step suitable for getting beginners dancing quickly and for teaching the lead for rhythm changes between one-step and two-step.  Clendenen gives it no special name or attribution, just “One Step.”

    Directions are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  Starting foot is left for the gentleman and right for the lady.  Begin in normal ballroom position, with the gentleman facing along the line of dance.

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  • Hesitate, Hesitate, Hesitate!

    • Era: 1910s
    • Dance: One-Step

    In his 1914 manual, Dances of To-day, Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman describes three different hesitations suitable for the one-step or Castle walk.  In one description he notes that a hesitation is

    …most practical, especially when one finds himself in a decidedly congested position, surrounded on all sides by merry dancers…it is the same as marking the time of the music, as the dancers execute the movement sur la place (on the spot).

    Because of this practicality, hesitations are one of the first things I teach new dancers of the one-step.  Here are Newman’s three hesitations for your dancing pleasure!

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  • The Overlooked Eight Step

    • Era: 1910s
    • Dances: one-step, tango, half & half, hesitation waltz

    Why, in fifteen-plus years of dancing ragtime socially, had I never done the eight step?  It’s not an obscure step; it’s the first variation world-famous dance couple Vernon and Irene Castle give for the one-step and is also mentioned by them in their descriptions of the tango, half and half, and hesitation waltz.  And yet somehow I’d neither danced it nor reconstructed it until late 2007 when I was looking for interesting one-step moves for some new dance students.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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