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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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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