Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Victorian

  • 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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  • La Musette

    La Musette is one of the many (many!) little dances and variations found in both M. B. Gilbert’s collection Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp’s even larger compilation, La Danse (Paris, 1903), much of which seems to have been copied and translated directly from Gilbert. The dance was classified under “Redowa and Mazurka” in Gilbert and “Les Mazurkas” in Lopp and should be performed to music with that accent.

    The first measure of La Musette is a polka redowa step (slide-cut-leap, rhythm 123) minus its initiating hop. The second measure was written out by Gilbert as cut-chassé-cut, in the rhythm 1&23. Lopp’s description is essentially the same.

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  • Not just “Harvest Home”

    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.

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  • Highland Mazourka

    Let’s get the important part out of the way first:

    The Highland Mazourka is not a mazurka.  

    It is, however, a delightful example of the nineteenth-century tendency to transpose dances from one time signature to another.  In this case, typical polka mazurka sequences have been transposed from 3/4 time to 4/4 time with a bit of extra hopping added to fill out the music, which should be of the Scottish strathspey style.  The polka mazurka itself consisted partly of polka (2/4) steps transposed to 3/4 time.  Confused by all these shifting time signatures?  Fear not; all will be made clear below!

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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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  • Leap Year figure, Washington, D. C., 1892

    Not having any more convenient descriptions of cotillion (dance party game) figures with leap year themes in books of such figures, I have to take them where I find them — in this case, in a description of a society leap year ball attended by no fewer than seven foreign ministers of different nations held in Washington, D. C., on March 24, 1892.  The ball was described briefly in The New York Times on March 25, 1892.  The majority of the short article is taken up by lengthy lists of all the important people who organized and attended the event, but in between, there is a description of a cotillion figure.  Interestingly, it was led by two couples simultaneously, from “opposite ends of the hall”.

    Dancing was general until 9:30 o’clock, when the cotillion began, led from opposite ends of the hall by Miss Richardson with Mr. William Slack and Miss Stout with Mr. Clifford Richardson. In the selection of the favors the greatest ingenuity had been exercised, and the laughter-provoking devices were highly satisfactory.

    Perhaps, sensible of the number of people attending, they were actually running two cotillions in parallel?

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  • “The Leap Year Ball”: a poem, 1896

    Before getting back to detailed newspaper descriptions of leap year balls, here’s a less detailed but still useful description of one in the form of a very mediocre poem.  It was published on page three of the Oakdale Leader, in Oakdale, California, on Friday, February 14th, 1896.

    The leap year elements mentioned specifically in the poem are:

    • the ladies “managing” things and taking the author into the ballroom
    • the “beaux” sitting in a row waiting for partners and the ladies rushing to find one, making sure no one was left out
    • Fannie and Julia as some sort of ball organizers or floor managers, wearing badges and making sure things went smoothly
    • a lady acting as treasurer and, by implication, asking the author to dance

    I admit to cynically feeling that the ladies being concerned that none of the “gints” were slighted was showing more care for their feelings than many gentlemen showed for those of ladies when in conventional roles — the ladies were perhaps deliberately setting an example for the gentlemen of how they wished to be treated.

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  • Four Tiny Polka Redowa Variations

    Believe it or not, even I get a little bit tired of going through the seemingly endless list of insignificant couple dance variations published in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and reprinted in French in G. W. Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Studying all of them is important for my overall project of analyzing late nineteenth century American couple dance variations, but a lot of them are just trivial as individual dances, though still useful as data points and material for improvisation.

    As with my trio of tiny galop variations a few years ago, here are four dances that fall in the mazurka/redowa classification that just don’t have enough to them to warrant individual posts.
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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.  

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  • The Woodland Yorke

    The Woodland Yorke was introduced by Maine conductor and dancing master Horace M. Pullen at the Seventeenth Annual Convention of the American Society of Professors of Dancing, held in New York City on September 4th-7th, 1894, and published in the proceedings of the convention.  Specifically, it was introduced on Tuesday, September 4th, 1894, as one of a list of eleven “works” placed in the hands of the Directors.  The convention then promptly adjoined to practice them.
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  • The Thé Dansante, 1891

    Dropping back to the late nineteenth century, here's another short blurb from the pages of Demorest's Family Magazine, following the Thanksgiving Pumpkin Party I described last year.  This little tidbit appeared in the "Chat" column of the February, 1891, issue, along with a description of a Valentine's party and comments on the overuse of floral decorations.  The anonymous author described the fashion that season of using a thé dansante (tea dance) held at the "usual hours" for a reception, four o'clock to seven o'clock in the late afternoon, for the purpose of introducing debutantes to the fashionable world. The thé dansante could stand on its own as an event or might be the lead-in to a dinner.

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  • A Masquerade in Montana, 1899

    And…it’s back to masquerades, fancy dress balls, crazy cotillion figures, and other fun for the month of October!  First up: a Christmas masquerade ball in Montana in 1899.

    Hefferlin Opera postcardThe Degree of Honor masquerade ball was held on Christmas night at the Hefferlin Opera House in Livingston, Montana, the elaborate building at right in the postcard photo at left; click to enlarge.  At this time, the Degree of Honor was the ladies’ auxiliary of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, a post-Civil War “fraternal” mutual benefit society providing insurance, burial policies, etc, to working-class men.  In the late 1890s, the Degree of Honor was said to have had 40,000 members nationally.  It later spun off into a separate organization and existed independently until 2017.

    Livingston itself was tiny at the time, having been founded as a cluster of tents at a future railroad stop in 1882.  Even today, its population is under ten thousand people (per the 2020 census); at the time of the ball, it was probably only around a thousand.  This puts into perspective its description as “largely attended” in the coverage of the ball in the social column of The Anaconda Standard on Sunday, December 31, 1889: seventy-five couples following the leaders of the march.  For a town of that size, that is actually quite impressive, and the coverage noted that the event succeeded both socially and financially.

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  • The America

    In honor of America’s birthday, here’s an appropriately-named variation by C. A. Carr (creator of the Highland Glide) which is long enough with enough dancing in place that it should probably be classified as a sequence dance and danced by all dancers in unison, as it would be quite the annoyance to other couples if done in the midst of a normal dance.  In M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) it is listed in the redowa/mazurka section and in George Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903) under “Les mazurkas”.  If forced to a decision, I’d call it a polka mazurka and note that it features a stealthy bit of York hidden inside it.

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  • A Pumpkin Party 1890

    A Pumpkin Party may seem misplaced in the calendar at this point, but this is specifically a Thanksgiving pumpkin party, taking place the evening of Thanksgiving Day, so it should be considered more like pumpkin pie and less like a jack-o-lantern, though there's definitely an element of that in the theme as well.  The overall concept is more harvest than Halloween, however, similar to the Red Ear Party except more, err, orange.

    The description of the party — possibly, but not necessarily, fictional — was published in Demorest's Family Magazine, No. CCCXXIX, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, dated November 1890.  Demorest's began as a fashion magazine but expanded to include a wide range of material, including quite a few little dance tidbits.

    The pumpkin theme began from the very start, with the invitations, which were sent on "pumpkin-colored round cards".  The party was held in a "pretty little stone barn and stable" with illuminated "pumpkin lanterns of all shapes and devices, some wearing the old familiar goblin-like 'eyes, nose, and mouth.' while others were cut in stars and flowers and geometrical designs."  This is, quite literally, a barn dance.

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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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  • A shorter Victorian “Sir Roger de Coverley”

    Over the twelve years I’ve been writing Kickery, I’ve twice discussed versions of Sir Roger de Coverley, the English “finishing dance” that was the direct ancestor of America’s Virginia Reel: a Regency-era version from Thomas Wilson and a Victorian-era version probably originated by Mrs. Nicholas Henderson.  The latter version of the dance, which shortened the figures and added an introductory figure for all the dancers, appeared in several English sources from around 1850 to 1870.  But it was not the only version in mid-nineteenth century England; at least two variations of a full version more like the Regency one continued to appear in dance manuals, and a fourth version, shortened even further, turned up occasionally as well.

    The dance being strongly associated with Christmas due to its appearance at Mr. Fezziwig’s ball in Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol, Christmas Eve seems an appropriate time to discuss this extremely short version.
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  • A Ballroom Basilisk, 1897

    I'm just going to leave this story here without any commentary.

    Happy Halloween!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    GONE WITH A BASILISK.

    A LURID SHORT STORY.

    BY G. L. Calderon

    Reginald passed his hand wearily over his aching brow, and glided languishing between the purple portières.  Within was a chaos of whirling muslin and hungry faces swimming on a sea of passionate, throbbing music.  There was a mist before his eyes; grinning heads floated restlessly by, gibbering in the shell-like ears of painted women.  Amid the fevered maelstrom, one figure loomed large and close upon his attention.  It was the hostess.  A hot wet hand pressed his.  “Law! what a squash!” he murmured in her ear, then plunged into the stream, and was borne away to the other side of the room.

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  • The Latest York

    Years ago, when I was working intensely on the “York set” of variations (see here, here, here, here, and here), I somehow skipped The Latest York, possibly because, unlike all those other “Yorks”, it does not feature the characteristic York step sequence of slide-close-slide-cut/close in “1&23” rhythm.

    M. B. Gilbert published The Latest York in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) “by permission of Constantine Carpenter, Son, and Charles C. Martel”.  This style of credit generally refers to the choreographer of the sequence and/or composer of the music.  The same pair are also credited with the Gavotte Glide.  Carpenter is listed in Gilbert’s directory of dancing masters as living in Philadelphia.  Martel is not in Gilbert’s directory, but his name appears in Philadelphia newspapers (The Times, October 21, 1894, e.g.) during the 1890s offering parties and lessons.

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  • Rye, just Rye

    Moving right along with late nineteenth-century variations from the usual pair of M. B. Gilbert (Round Dancing, Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp (La Danse, Paris, 1903), here’s a short one that’s classified as a redowa or mazurka.  Lopp attributed La Rye to Gilbert, who had previously printed it in his own work without attribution.  Gilbert did not ever credit himself specifically in his own book, unfortunately, which makes it difficult to be absolutely certain of the attribution.

    The name of the variation suggests that it was meant to be danced to a musical setting of the famous Robert Burns poem, “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye“, which was set in both waltz and schottische rhythms (including both alternately in the Rye Waltz, a sequence dance dating back to at least the 1890s).  The waltz version of the tune, which may be heard on this YouTube video, is not accented like a redowa or mazurka and does not offer especially good musical support to this sequence of steps.  There may have been a version published with a more mazurka- or redowa-like style, but I haven’t been able to locate one.  Skilled musicians might also be able to tweak it musically on the fly.  It’s also possible that there was a completely different tune called “The Rye”, but I actually find this less likely, as the word was so strongly associated with a particular tune.  There was a 1922 novelty dance (“The New Rye Dance”) published which combined a “redowa, Rye movement, and waltz” using “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye”, but that’s much too late to mean anything more than that people really liked adapting “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” for dancing.

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  • Wayside Gavotte

    Just to be thorough, here's a quick reconstruction of the Wayside Gavotte I mentioned in my previous post on the Stephanie Gavotte.  This is another short couple dance sequence, but unlike M. B. Gilbert's Stephanie Gavotte, it moves normally along line of dance throughout and loosely follows a "doubled" schottische pattern with four bars of forward travel and four bars (more-or-less) of turning.  Though it is meant to be danced to "Stéphanie-Gavotte", there is no reason it can't be danced to other schottische music.

    Per Gilbert Dances, Vol. II (1913, Susan Hoffman Gilman, ed.), the Wayside Gavotte was choreographed by Helen C. Way, whom I presume to have been a student of Gilbert's.  It is undated, and since, according to the biography in Gilbert Dances, Vol. I, Gilbert was teaching until his death, it could be from as late as the beginning of 1910.  The use of the waltz-galop step feels to me more reminiscent of the schottische sequences of the 1880s-1890s, however, so I suspect it is from closer to 1900.

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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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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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