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Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Two-Step (circa 1900)

  • La Marjolaine

    La Marjolaine, The New Society Dance, was published by the White-Smith Music Publishing Co. in 1888. The music was “arranged from an Italian theme” by Pierre Duvernet with an accompanying “combination of figures” by E. W, Masters. The title page of the sheet music may be seen below; click to enlarge.

    The figures are a very simple eight-bar sequence: a typical late nineteenth century variant of the “heel and toe” polka combined with the four-slide galop. Although the dance is clearly a two-step, complete with music in 6/8, that term is never used in the instructions – an interesting hint that the two-step was not yet well-known as a term in 1888 as it would become in the 1890s.

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  • Battle Confetti

    One hundred and sixteen years ago today, the magazine Harper’s Bazaar published a brief blurb predicting fashionable dances for the winter would be of “military tone”, no doubt influenced by the burst of patriotic fervor occasioned by the brief Spanish-American War, which by the autumn of 1898 had moved into peace negotiations.  The article gives a quick peek at what dances interested Americans (or, at least, American dancing masters) in the second-to-last winter of the nineteenth century.

    Unsurprisingly, the writer acknowledges the “extraordinary popularity” of the two-step.  The five-step schottische is called a “new” schottische, which is inaccurate, since it had been around since at least 1890, when it was included in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, and possibly as early as 1871 under a different name.  The dance may have been receiving a fresh push from the assembled masters of The American Society of Professors of Dancing, whose meeting seems to have spurred this little notice.  No other couple dances are mentioned.

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  • Two-Stepping en français

    As previously noted, European descriptions of American dances like the late nineteenth-century two-step are sometimes more helpful than American ones.  Having spent more time than expected this past weekend speaking French in Toronto (with a bunch of folks from Montréal), I’m inspired today to point out a couple of American-influenced descriptions of the two-step from Paris around 1900.

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  • Mr. Scott’s Two-Step

    The two-step of the 1890s and early 1900s was so simple to dance, and so aggressively condemned by many dancing masters, that it’s actually fairly unusual to find a good description of it in a dance manual, though minor variations and sequences of dubious originality and debatable utility abound.  English dancing master Edward Scott, in How to dance and guide to the ball-room (London, c1902), provides a rare overview of the basic dance as performed in Edwardian England.

    Steps and timing
    Scott specifies that the music for the two-step should be in 6/8, and explains that it is “practically our old friend the galop performed with figures, in regulated sequences, and to a different rhythm,” though Americans, he claims, apply the name two-step to “any dance founded on the chassé movement, or that in which one foot appears to be chasing the other.”

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  • Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Pasadena

    The Pasadena, a would-be replacement for the two-step, appears in the 1900 reprint of New York dancing master Allen Dodworth’s 1885 tome, Dancing and its relations to education and social life, but can be dated back to at least 1898.  It appears to have been created as a dancing school dance, as Dodworth’s nephew, T. George Dodworth, discussed in his introduction to the new edition of his uncle’s manual:

    In order to bring the work up to date, I have been requested
    to write an introduction which will include a list of dances that have come into fashion since my uncle’s book was originally published.


    As a matter of fact, however, society dances have decreased, rather than increased, during this interval. When this work first appeared most of the round dances described in its pages were fashionable. But Dame Fashion is fickle, and, owing to some unaccountable change in taste, we now have only the Two Step, the Waltz, occasionally a Saratoga Lancers, and the Cotillion. In the dancing-schools the old dances are still taught, but with numerous new combinations, which are composed to improve the pupil and keep alive the interest. From these combinations we have the Tuxedo Lancers, the Amsterdam, Gavotte der Kaiserin, Minuet de la Cour (for four persons), and the Pasedena.

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  • Le Klondike Two Step

    Reading this morning’s headlines about events in Alaska, it seems the moment to post this little French sequence dance, which can also be used to vary an early twentieth-century two-step.  I’ve found this sequence in only one source: La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903 as part of a two-book compendium.  The smaller part (forty-five pages to the two hundred-plus of La Danse) of the compendium is a brief manual of etiquette and costume written by J. Chéron.

    Mr. Lopp seems to have been an interesting character, an American expatriate and former Chicago dancing master whose partnership in a Parisian musical conservatory went extremely sour, resulting in lawsuits, lockouts, and a “very tempestuous scene” with one of the patronesses of the conservatory, who insisted on performing a concerto she had composed.  Apparently the piece was so dreadful that the audience

    was unable…to endure the entire infliction, and most of those present incontinently left after the first movement had been half finished.

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  • Round Two Step: A 1903 Dance Mixer

    Mixer dances, where all the participants shift partners at intervals, are useful icebreakers at dance events.  In A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing (1903), Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman offers a simple mixer for use with the then-fashionable two-step, asserting hopefully that

    This dance is rapidly gaining popularity, as it is most enjoyable.

    The dancers take partners and hold hands in a grand circle, with each gentleman standing to the left of his partner, and all circle to the left (clockwise).  The dance leader calls out a number (3, 7, 12, etc.), and all the dancers face their partners and begin a grand chain, giving right hands to their partners and pulling by, left to the next, right to the next, left to the next, etc.  As they move, they count people, starting with their partners as “one.”  When they reach the number called out by the leader, each takes ballroom position with that person and two-step until the leader gives a signal (typically a whistle), at which point all the dancers open up into a grand circle and once again circle to the left.

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  • Lamb’s Waltz Two Step

    Here’s an easy waltz variation from English dance teacher William Lamb’s Everybody’s Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900).  The Waltz Two Step is a short sequence of two-step done in waltz time which can be used as a variation in a late 19th-century waltz or as a short standalone sequence dance.  Because the movements are quite slow-paced, it is best suited to extremely fast music.

    This sequence represents the an early form of “hesitation waltz” from before that term came into use in the 1910s.  In this case the normal two-step movement (briefly described in a previous post here) rather than being counted “1&2” in 2/4 rhythm, as is more typical in this era, is danced in 3/4 rhythm with each two-step stretched over two full bars of music, so that the slide-close-slide happens on the first, third, and fourth of the six beats.

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  • Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance

    • Era: late 1890s-1900 England/France

    “Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance,” was invented by English dancing master R. M. Crompton, later to become the first president of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and a part of the early 20th-century movement to keep ballroom dance out of the hands of the “wrong” people, which primarily meant American, and especially African-American, influences.  That was all in the future in the 1890s, however, when this dance first appeared.  It may have first been published in Crompton’s own book, Theory and Practice of Modern Dancing (London, c1891).  Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Crompton’s work.  The dance, however, can be found in at least three other works of the late 19th century, attributed in each case to Crompton.

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  • The Très-Chic

    • Era: late 1890s-early 1900s
    “The Très-Chic is a dance for couples in six-eight time, and is of very animated and lively character.”

    With these words, William Lamb introduces “A new Round Dance for the Ball-Room.”  Lamb was a noted English dance teacher and writer who served as president of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing.  The Très-Chic appeared in his book Saxon’s Everybody’s Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London, c1898-1900; it is listed in the 1901 English Catalogue of Books for those years), from which it was blatantly plagiarized by two dance writers publishing in the American Midwest in the first few years of the twentieth century, including A.C. Wirth in his Complete Quadrille Call Book (Chicago, 1902) and D.F. Jay in his ABC Guide to Ballroom Dancing (Chicago, c1900), both using Lamb’s language to describe the dance.  (Some biographical information about Wirth may be found in my earlier post on the Rye Waltz.)

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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