Long, long, ago I published a reconstruction of the mid-19th century American contra (country) dance published as “Harvest Home” in some of Elias Howe’s dance compilations. I have nothing new to add to that reconstruction, but as I’ve collated more and more contra dances of that era, I’ve found the same figures under a couple of other names in other source, including one predating Howe’s publication of it, with a suggestive pattern of differences.
(more…)Category: Victorian
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Revisiting La Russe
Twelve years ago, I wrote a brief post explaining how to dance “La Russe”, a redowa/mazurka variation I found, like so many others, in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and [George] Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903). I remain confident in my reconstruction, but in the intervening years I’ve discovered the official music for it, which clarifies that it was intended as an independent dance rather than merely a variation, and a bit of background. So it’s time to revisit La Russe!
First, I’d suggest going back and reading my original post on La Russe, since I am not going to go back through the details of how to perform it.
The choreographer of La Russe remains unknown, but apparently that was intentional: La Russe was created and promoted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, which had a policy of not crediting the choreographer(s) for the dances they published as their own. La Russe was established among them by early 1882, as their proceedings record that at their thirty-eight meeting, on April 2, 1882, they voted to publish original music for the dance by George W. Allen and noted that the step would be practiced at their next meeting.
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Brain Fever, 1840
Ah, sweet October, which I generally devote to discussion of fancy dress and masquerade balls, weird cotillion figures, and similar frivolity!
I have two words to start off the month in the proper spirit:
headless quadrille
Specifically:
The first couple is Anne Boleyn and Louis XVI. They are facing Lady Jane Grey and Marino Faliero (a 14th century Venetian Doge). Marie Antoinette and Charles I make up the first side couple, facing the Earl of Essex, dancing alone.
In case anyone missed the connection, all of these people were beheaded.
Themed quadrilles from history or literature were very common at fancy dress balls in the nineteenth century, but this really has got to be the Best Theme Ever. I just about died laughing when I realized the joke.
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A Louisville Masquerade, 1843
Here’s a lively account of a jolly and slightly drunken masquerade held in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1843. This account has a little of everything: costumes, bad puns, a bit about the dances, and the effects of alcohol on the revelers. It’s too long a report to comment on every bit of it, but the entire thing is transcribed at the bottom of this post.
The report starts out with a lot of philosophy about the joys of masquerades, but the first really useful bit is that as in A Few Friends, the unmasking is done at supper-time, which was probably around midnight:
The unmasking at the supper table is often a great source of laughter and surprise, when it discovers the faces of numerous acquaintances who have been playing off their wit and raillery against each other all the evening, under their various disguises.
All sorts of people attended masquerades, which is part of what made them scandalous. In Kentucky, at least, this mixing was not to be feared, though I suspect the upper classes might have differed on this point:
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Professor Webster’s Masquerade Party, 1876
On March 18, 1876, the Morning Herald of Wilmington, Delaware, published a short blurb covering a recent “masquerade party” given by one Professor Webster at the Dancing Academy Hall. Unusually, the newspaper coverage says nothing about the costumes other than that there were enough of them to “have exhausted a first class costumer’s establishment, and have taxed the ingenuity of an artist.” Instead, we get an actual dance program, consisting entirely of quadrilles, Lanciers, and glide waltzes, and accompanied by names which might be masquerade costumes, though I’m not certain of that.
Professor Webster was a long-time Wilmington dancing master – he was still teaching as late as June 4, 1899, when the Sunday Morning Star reported on the closing reception of his current series of dance classes (see about two-thirds of the way down the first column here.)
Here’s the list of dances, in order.
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A Fancy Dress Party (from A Few Friends), 1864
A Few Friends, by Korman Lynn, was serialized in nine parts in Godey's Lady's Book during the year 1864. The serial doesn't have a lot of plot; it describes eight evenings of a group of friends gathering together to, for the most part, play parlor games. It's great for anyone who wants to research mid-nineteenth century parlor games, which are described in elaborate detail, but the only section of any real interest to me is the final one, in which the friends gather for a fancy dress party.
To pick up the story at this point, it is only necessary to know that the kind and generous Ben Stykes has been quietly pursuing the lively Mary Gliddon from the beginning of the story, though a certain Mr. Hedges, a young man from Liverpool, is also interested in her.
Even a single part of the story is too long for me to transcribe here, but I'll quote the costume descriptions, some of which are detailed and unusual, and the resolution of the romance.
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A Leap Year Ball, Providence, 1892
Moving from the American frontier back to the east coast and into increasingly amusing descriptions of leap year events, here’s a very upscale event held in Providence, Rhode Island, on Monday, February 29, 1892, and reported in The Providence News on Tuesday, March 1. This was a much more glittering affair than the frontier balls in Montana and Wyoming. According to the article, subscriptions to the ball cost $25 for eight invitations, and the German (cotillion) favors cost an estimated $900. In today’s terms, that is around $700 for the tickets and an eye-popping $25,000 for the favors, which were always an opportunity for conspicuous consumption among upper-class society.
The ball was held at the brand-new Trocadero (1891), which, according to Providence’s inventory in 1980 for the National Register of Historic Places, was a restaurant and dancing parlor owned by local businessman Lloyd Tillinghast, who also provided the ball supper, served on “small and beautifully decked tables” by waiters brought in from Boston and New York. The Trocadero no longer stands, alas. Two bands were engaged: Reeves’ Band and the “Hungarian band of New York”, who alternated playing.
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A Leap Year Ball, Wyoming, 1888
Continuing to roam around the late nineteenth century American frontier, where a surprising number of newspaper descriptions of leap year balls originate, here are some excerpts from a burbling account of a ball in the small town of Douglas, Wyoming. Like Sun River, it was founded in 1867 and was probably extremely small. The 1890 Wyoming census recorded only 2,988 people in all of Converse County. The ball was described on page five of Bill Barlow’s Budget on Wednesday, February 8, 1888, as having taken place the previous Friday evening. The newspaper title is interesting; more about the paper and its colorful founder, Merris C. Barrow, may be found at the Wyoming Historical Society’s Wyohistory site.
The ball was held at the Douglas opera house and was described as “the most successful and enjoyable affair of its kind in the history of Douglas.” Balls are generally described in newspapers as successful unless some sort of disaster occurs, but in a town whose history stretched back only two decades, it might actually have been true.
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Three Tiny Galop Variations
Wrapping up my impromptu miniseries of posts on galop variations found in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903), here’s a trio of galop variations which I don’t feel warrant sufficient time or analysis for individual posts:
- Two of the three are short “do something, then some galop” sequences; the other is even shorter and rather dull
- None of them are very challenging to perform, and two have repeated leaps from a complete stop, which, as a dancer, I don’t really enjoy.
- None of them have any conflicts between sources.
- One has a reconstruction problem, but it’s minor and easily resolved.
- I fully expect that all of them have matching sheet music and that the names of the variations are actually the names of the tunes to which they were choreographed, but I haven’t been able to locate any of it, and none of them are sufficiently attractive to inspire me to spend much time searching.
So, in the interest of efficiency, here’s the trio together with brief notes about each.
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Scotch, Hungarian, whatever (cotillion figure)
H. Layton Walker’s Grand Scotch Chain, published in Twentieth Century Cotillion Figures, by (Two Step Publishing Company, Buffalo, New York, 1912), is only moderately interesting as a figure, but tracing its progress from a figure that was neither “grand” nor “Scotch” when it started out is an interesting illustration of how cotillion figures were transmitted across time and international borders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The figure itself is quite simple:
- Two couples separate and select new partners
- They form a four-couple quadrille set
- Head gentlemen turn by right elbows once and a half round, then give left elbows to opposite ladies and turn to place with her
- Side gentlemen repeat
- Head ladies repeat
- Side ladies repeat
- All take partners and waltz
