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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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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