Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Quadrilles

  • Chivers’ Troidrilles (2 of 2)

    Continuing on with figures two and three of Chivers' Troidrilles…

    Figure Two (Tune: Eté) 8b + 24bx4
    8b    Introduction (not repeated)
    2b    First head trio forward (en avant) and stop
    2b    Opposite trio forward (en avant) and stop
    4b    All retire to places, turning round to the right twice
    8b    Four head ladies right hands across (moulinet) and left hands back
    8b    Set (pas de basque) in trios (4b) and hands three round (4b)
    Repeat three more times, other couples leading in turn

    This is another straightforward reconstruction.  The figure is done four times as in standard quadrille practice: twice by the head couples (first couple leading, then opposite couple leading) then twice by the side couples, led first by the couple to the right of the first head couple.  

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  • Chivers’ Troidrilles (1 of 2)

    I adore dances that are for trios rather than couples.  There are so many interesting things one can do when there are three dancers in the mix rather than just two!  And, of course, it helps the address the problem that historical dance tends to be imbalanced in gender, with many more women than men interested, but many of them desiring to dance in historical gender roles…though those were not always as rigid as people believe.  Figures for one gentleman and two ladies go some way toward addressing this at balls.

    I've written previously about G. M. S. Chivers' "Swedish" dances, trio country dances that were not actually Swedish, and the Scottish Sixdrilles, a reworking of the French quadrille to be danced by four trios rather than four couples.  The Troidrilles are more in the spirit of the latter (though the name is more harmonious): a miniature "quadrille" of only three figures for four trios published in Chivers' The Dancing Master in Miniature (London, 1825).  The figures are original, though very Chivers in style.

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  • The Nahant Quadrilles (4 of 4)

    The final post in my series on The Nahant Quadrilles: figure five and some thoughts on the quadrille as a whole!

    The original wording:

    1st two cross over give right hand.  And back give left hand.  Form a line.  Balancez.  Half Promenade.  Forward 4.  Half right & left to places

    This one should look familiar to anyone who has danced the French quadrille: it’s a slightly shortened version of the third figure, La Poule.  This makes it quite easy to reconstruct, but it does present a problem with the music.  The shortened figure is twenty-four bars, while the music has four strains with no indications of any repeat structure.  Conveniently, however, the fourth strain is a transposed and elaborated version of the A strain, so for a twenty-four bar figure one could play A + BCA’x4 or perhaps save the A’ strain for the last time through and play A + BCAx3 + BCA’.  The Spare Parts recording ignores the A’ strain and just plays A + BCAx4, which works fine for dancing my reconstruction.

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  • The Nahant Quadrilles (3 of 4)

    And now we come to figure four, the biggest mess in the entire quadrille!  Problems with the figures, problems with the music, problems correlating the two…I believe in my conclusions, but I can't deny that there's a lot of guesswork involved in any reconstruction of this figure.

    First, the music.  Take a look at Figure 4's tune, "Georgette", here.  There are three eight bar strains marked with a Da Capo al segno, to which my first response was, what segno?  There is no segno!  There's a Fine, oddly located at the end of the B strain, so presumably it was meant to be Da Capo al Fine.  But quadrille music usually ends on the A strain, and while the length of the figure is the next problem to consider, it's difficult to come up with a reasonable repeat structure that has AB at the end.  In thirty-two bars, A + BCAB repeated, perhaps, but in twenty-four bars, it's just impossible. 

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  • The Nahant Quadrilles (2 of 4)

    Onward we go, with figures two and three of The Nahant Quadrilles!

    For figure two, the music (available here) has two strains with a Da Capo, which works without any tweaking.  The Spare Parts recording matches my reconstruction.

    The original language for the figures:

    Four ladies grand chain.  Forward & back 1st two.  Back to back.  Repeat 4 times.

    This is a very short figure, only sixteen bars.  The second half is very straightforward: the first pair (first lady and opposite gentleman) go forward and back then perform a dos-à-dos.  As in the first figure, each time through this is a different pair.

    The first half, however, presents an interesting choice.

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  • The Nahant Quadrilles (1 of 4)

    At left is the cover of The Nahant Quadrilles, published in Philadelphia in 1836 but named after the resort town of Nahant, located on a peninsula near Boston and seen in the background of the cover image (click to enlarge).  For many years, Nahant has been the home of a summer 1860s ball hosted by Nahant resident and Vintage Victorian proprietor Katy Bishop and her late husband Ben.  The Nahant Quadrilles were first worked on for these balls by the Bishops and my own late mentor, Patri Pugliese, in a style befitting the 1860s milieu in which they were used.  Patri was a stickler in his approach to dance reconstruction and dubbed his version a “choreography” because of the degree of adaptation.

    I’ve long had my own reconstruction of this set tucked away, and since the Nahant ball (lately expanded to a full weekend) is canceled due to Covid, this seems an opportune moment to publish it and compare the different approaches.

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  • Paine’s Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (4 of 4)

    (This is fourth in a series of four posts covering Paine’s Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here, figures one and two here, and figures three and four here.)

    Concluding my series on Paine’s Twelfth Set, the final figure!

    No. 5, tune “La Nouvelle Fantasia“
    Figure.
    Chassez croisez huit, les quatre Cavaliers en avant 4 mes, les quatre dames de meme, balancez tour de mains, la Cavalier seul en avant et en arriere 8 mes, la dame seul de meme.
    La Grand Promenade.

    All 8 chassez across and back again, the 4 Gent: advance and retire 4 bars, the 4 Ladies the same, balancez and turn your partners, one Gent: advance and retire twice 8 bars, the opposite Lady do the same.  
    Promenade all 8.

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  • Paine’s Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (3 of 4)

    (This is third in a series of four posts covering Paine’s Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here and figures one and two here.)

    Continuing on with Paine’s Twelfth Set, the next two figures…

    No. 3, tune “L’Aimable“
    Figure de La Poule. — or
    Le 4 dames font le moulinet pendant que les 4 Cavaliers font la grand Promenade a droite, ils donnent les mins a leurs dames et balancez tour de mains pour se remettre a sa place, les tiroirs a quatre et restez à la place opposee, de meme les 4 autres demie Promenade tous les 8, Jusqua [sic] votre place et tour de mains en place.
    Contre Partie.

    The 4 Ladies moulinet while the 4 Gent: do grand Promenade to the right, the 4 Gents: give their hands to their partners, balancez and turn them round to their places, the tiroirs 4 and stop at the opposite place the other 4 the same, half Promenade all 8 to your places, and turn your partner round to your place.  
    The same again.

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  • Paine’s Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (2 of 4)

    (This is second in a series of four posts covering Paine’s Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here.)

    All right, let’s move on to the actual figures!  In my transcriptions below of the French and English instructions, the capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and lack of accents over the French vowels are all as printed in the original.

    No. 1, tune “La Belle Flamand”
    Figure de la Pantalon — or
    Quatre demie chaine Anglaise, les 4 autres demie chaine Anglaise, demie Promenade tous les 8, et tour de mains a votre place, chaine des dames celles qui ont commencez [sic], balancez 8 et tour de mains. 
    Contre Partie.

    Four half right and left, the other four the same, half Promanade [sic] all 8 to your place and turn your partners round, Ladies chain by those who began the dance, balance 8 and turn your partners round. 
    The same again the other 4.

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  • Paine’s Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (1 of 4)

    As with my earlier reconstructions of Howe’s figures for “Les Rats” and the third set of Simonet’s Parisian Quadrilles, I was primarily motivated to reconstruct Paine’s Twelfth Set of Quadrilles by the existence of a high-quality recording of the music.  I’m not sure what prompted Green Ginger to choose this quadrille, out of more than a dozen of Paine’s other sets of quadrille music (besides his most-famous and oft-recorded first) to include on their CD of Regency-era dance music, Music for Quadrilles, but it’s an excellent set of tunes played beautifully.

    I’ve used these recordings in the past as variant music for the standard quadrille figures, which they were structured to fit.  But Paine’s original sheet music also included new figures for those who didn’t want to dance the usual ones, and they turned out to have some unusual figures which I quite like.

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  • Aladdin Quadrille

    Like the New Scotia Quadrille, the Aladdin Quadrille is one of several single-figure quadrilles found in the “New, Enlarged, & Complete Edition” of D. (David) Anderson’s Ball-Room Guide (Dundee, this edition undated but probably c1886).  This is a simple, fun figure that would fit easily into a Scottish-themed ball.

    Despite there being various quadrille sets called the Aladdin Quadrilles, Anderson doesn’t seem to have had any specific music in mind.  He notes only that it can be danced in 2/4 or 6/8.

    Aladdin Quadrille (8 bars introduction + 64 bars x4)
    8b   Introduction/honors (not repeated)
    8b   All promenade round
    4b   Ladies advance to the center and retire
    4b   Gentlemen advance to the center and retire
    8b   All set to partners and turn by the right hand
    8b   Head couples advance and retire, then half right and left
    8b   Side couples advance and retire, then half right and left
    8b   Grand chain half round to places
    16b All waltz (in duple time) around (see performance notes below)

    The figure is danced four times, with the head couples leading on the first and third iterations and the side couples leading on the second and fourth.

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  • Un jeu d’échecs (a game of chess), 1810

    Another themed quadrille described by Laure Junot, the Duchess of Abrantès, was the “game of chess” danced, or at least presented, at a masked ball in Paris in the February of 1810.  The quadrille was also described in her Memoires de Madame la duchesse d’Abrantes, which were published and republished in multiple volumes in a variety of editions.  The French text below was taken from an 1837 fourth edition published in Brussels, which may be found online here.  A contemporary (1833) English translation is online here, but it is not a close enough translation and omits some lines, so I’ve done my own, with reference to it.

    Junot spent more time in her memoirs complaining about the costumes and rehearsal time required for this quadrille than she did on the actual performance, but from her description, it seems like very few of the pieces (dancers) actually got to do much, unless perhaps they danced as they entered the board.  But what little she describes does mention steps, and the costume descriptions give us a fairly good idea of how the dancers must have appeared: vaguely Egyptian pawns with tightly-wrapped skirts and sleeves like mummies and sphinx-like hairstyles, knights like centaurs with horse rumps made from wicker, rooks wearing wicker towers, and fools (bishops) in caps with bells.

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  • Reminiscences, 1865

    I have what seems like an endless collection of works of nineteenth-century women’s fiction that I plow through for the dance references whenever I have the chance.  Most of them are overly sentimental and laden with heavy-handed moral messages.  “Reminiscences”, which was serialized in the American women’s periodical Godey’s Lady’s Book from February to June, 1865, was no exception to this, alas, but at least it was relatively short.

    The background of the piece is a bit of a mystery.  The author is the same “Ethelstone” credited with “Dancing the Schottische” (Godey’s, July 1862), which I discussed a few years ago.  I’ve never been able to locate any information about this author.  And “Reminiscences” adds a new element of confusion because it is written in first person and purports to be the story of one Ethel Stone.  Was “Ethelstone” actually a woman named Ethel Stone?  Is this fiction masquerading as memoir?  Or part of an actual memoir of a life that oh-so-conveniently included the elements of a mid-nineteenth-century morality tale?  That seems unlikely, so I assume that it’s fiction.  But I may never know for certain.

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  • Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille

    Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille was created by Washington, D. C., dancing master George T. Sheldon, who had a lengthy career as a dancing master to both children and adults and was the author of at least a couple of other quadrilles.  In May, 1898, Sheldon was discussed briefly in M. B. Gilbert’s dance journal, The Director, in which it was said that he was then 72 and had been teaching for 57 years.  His most famous pupil was probably Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant.  This quadrille was said in several sources to be dedicated to her.

    Professor Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille seems to have first been published around 1893, possibly by H. N. Grant, and thereafter turns up in a number of midwestern dance manuals running through the early years of the new century.  It is referred to variously by its full name, by the shorter Sheldon’s Presidential Polka Quadrille or Sheldon’s Polka Quadrille, and, in one manual, as Williams’ Presidential Polka Quadrille.  I have no idea who Williams was or why he was credited with a quadrille well documented as having been authored by Sheldon.

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  • Political Dance Jokes: The Italian Quadrille, 1859

    1859-06-04 Punch - Italian QuadrilleThe humor piece at left, “The Italian Quadrille” (click to enlarge), appeared in the June 4, 1859, issue of the famous British humor magazine, Punch.  It’s obvious from the timing that it’s satirizing the brief Franco-Austrian War of 1859, also known as the Second Italian War of Independence.  I love it when dance terms get used this way.  This one isn’t as clever overall as the near-contemporaneous Quadrille Nautically Described (1856), but what it lacks in clever figures it makes up for in real-world meaning.

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  • Susan’s Sociables

    When I first wrote about the quadrille figure called the Sociable almost seven years ago, I noted that some sources offered slightly different sets of figures, and at least two suggested that the choice of figures was up to the caller:

    “No positive rule as to what figure shall be called in the Quadrille Sociable.  The choice is left entirely to the prompter.”  (Brookes, L. De G.  Brookes on Modern Dancing.  New York, 1867)

    “Prompters often call figures in the ‘Sociable’ to suit their fancy, introducing the ‘Star Figure,’ ‘Grand Chain,’ etc.”  (De Garmo, William.  The Dance of Society.  New York, 1875)

    I rarely exercise the option to call variant figures; my habit has been to do the most common four-figure sequence twice over, once for the ladies to progress and once for the gentlemen, with an eight-bar “All chassez” and honors coda at the end.  Including introductory honors, this calls for a structure of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b.  Working with live musicians, I can have music played to fit this pattern exactly.  Or, if I am using the Sociable as the final figure of a quadrille, the short version with the progressive figures done only once (ladies progressing) is plenty, and since 8b + 32bx4 + 8b is a common finale structure, if necessary, it is easy to find a recording with that pattern.

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  • Revisiting the Flirtation Figure

    Almost six and a half years ago, I reconstructed and briefly discussed the Flirtation Figure, which appeared in William Lamb’s How and What to Dance (London, 1903 or 1904) as a separate figure after the usual five figures of the first set of quadrilles.  My slightly revised reconstruction of Lamb’s figure:

    Flirtation Figure (8 bars + 32 bars x4 + 8 bars)
    8b     Introduction (not repeated)
    4b     Grand Circle: all take hands and forward and back
    4b     All turn partners two hands
    4b     All four ladies forward and back
    4b     All four gentlemen forward, turn, and bow to lady at their left (their corner lady)
    4b     Facing corners, all balance by stepping right, close left behind, step right, touch toe of left in front (1, 2, 3, 4); repeat to left
    4b     Turn corners two hands, ending in gentleman’s original place and taking closed hold
    8b     All galopade around the set (four-slide galop to each position, alternating over hands/over elbows)
    Repeat previous thirty-two bars three more times. After last repetition:
    8b     Grand Circle and turn partners two hands

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  • The Sixdrilles (3 of 3)

    Wrapping up my mini-series on the Sixdrilles, here are the final two figures and some overall thoughts.  The earlier figures can be found in my first and second posts in the series.

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  • The Sixdrilles (2 of 3)

    Moving right along from my first post in the Sixdrilles series, here are the reconstructions of the next two figures:

    Figure Two: L’Été (8b introduction + 24bx4)
    4b    First gentleman and two opposite ladies en avant and en arrière.
    4b    Same three chassez-dechassez (à droite et à gauche)
    4b    Same three traversez, gentleman crossing between the two ladies
    4b    Same three chassez-dechassez
    4b    Same three traversez/balancez [see note below] while partners balancez
    4b    Same three rond de trois

    The figure is then repeated by the second gentleman and the two opposite ladies, the third gentlemen and two opposite ladies, and the fourth gentleman and two opposite ladies.

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  • The Sixdrilles (1 of 3)

    The Sixdrilles are a clever reworking of the figures French Quadrille (or First Set) for a group of twelve dancers in the form of a square of trios, each consisting of a gentleman and two ladies.  I have two Scottish sources for them, which match fairly closely:

    The Ball-Room, by Monsieur J. P. Boulogne (Glasgow, 1827).

    Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide…Third Edition, by the Messrs. Lowe (Edinburgh, c1830)

    Monsieur Boulogne is billed as French, but I know no more about him.  The Messrs. Lowe were a group of four brothers, all dance teachers, one of whom eventually became famous as dancing master at Balmoral for the family of Queen Victoria.  Their book is difficult to date, especially since it is a third edition.  A reference to the Sixdrilles being created around the time of the coronation of Charles X puts it at 1824 or later, and a late reference to the opera Guillaume Tell (Paris, 1829) at the very end of the book suggests 1830 onward.  The last half-dozen pages look like a later attachment, however, and may have been added for the second or third edition.  The Sixdrilles appear much earlier and are integrated into the overall work.

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  • Three “Scottish” Setting Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles

    (This continues a very occasional series of posts on setting steps for quadrilles, with the previous posts including eight easy sequences and two French sequences.)

    Calling these three sequences “Scottish” is really a bit of a misnomer, since the sources are Alexander Strathy’s Elements of the Art of Dancing (Edinburgh, 1822), which is in large part a translation of a French manual by J. H. Goudoux, and an anonymous Scottish manuscript entitled Contre Danses à Paris 1818.  All three sequences are certainly French in their steps and style and quite possibly in origin.  They probably would not have caused anyone in Paris in that era to bat an eyelash.  But technically, they are documented to Scotland, not France, in the late 1810s-early 1820s.

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  • Two French Setting Sequences for Regency-era Quadrilles

    Several years ago I posted eight easy setting sequences for Regency-era French quadrilles and said in the comments I’d try to post more “soon”.  That has now stretched to more than five years, but, better late than never, here are a couple of others, this time directly from a trio of French manuals by J. H. Gourdoux (or Gourdoux-Daux):

    Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (2nd edition, 1811)
    Recueil d’un Genre Nouveau de Contredanses et Walses (1819)
    De l’Art de la Danse (1823)

    Once again, these are easy sequences, but a bit more interesting than the previous set.

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  • New Scotia Quadrille

    A while back I discussed the wonderful dance CD Music for Quadrilles, by the English band Green Ginger (with Kevin Smith).  At the time, I skimmed over the tracks for five modern Scottish (RSCDS) dances, since I didn’t have any way to check the ones with historical sources against the originals.  Since then, I’ve come across a copy of one of the editions of D. (David) Anderson’s Ball-Room Guide, a “New, Enlarged, & Complete Edition”, which the liner notes of Music for Quadrilles cite as the source for one of the historical dances, New Scotia Quadrille.

    According to J. P. (Joan) and T. M. Flett in Traditional Dancing in Scotland (paid link), David Anderson taught in Dundee and in a number of other towns from c1850-1911.  His Ball-Room Guide seems to have gone through at least five editions, with the “New, Enlarged” versions appearing between the mid-1880s and late 1890s.  Since the one I examined is not dated, and I have no others to compare it to, I cannot date it precisely.

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  • Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (3 of 3)

    (This is the third and final post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé.  Previous posts are here (with a general introduction) and here.)

    My third and (so far) final sequence for an eight-bar chassé-croisé comes from Elements and Principles of the Art of Dancing, a translation of J. H. Gourdoux published by Victor Guillou in Philadelphia in 1817.  The translation, presumably of the 1811 Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville, is inconsistent in how closely it hews to Gourdoux’s original.  This step sequence for chassé-croisé does not appear in the 1811 manual at all and may have originated with Guillou himself.

    Even more than Gourdoux’s own sequence, this one features different footwork for the gentlemen and the ladies.

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  • Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (2 of 3)

    (This is the second post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé.  See the first post for a general introduction to the figure.)

    My second sequence for chassé-croisé actually comes from a French source, the second edition of Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (Paris, 1811) by J. H. Gourdoux.  The same sequence reappears in his later manual, De l’Art de la Danse (Paris, 1823).  It is similar to the Strathy sequence described in my previous post, but the differences are quite intriguing.

    I won't cover steps in this post, since I just summarized them in the previous one and no additional ones are required for Gourdoux's sequence.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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