Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Victorian

  • Mr. Layland’s Polka Contre Danse

    There are at least five different dances in the second half of the nineteenth century whose name is some variation on the generic “polka country dance”.  The one I’m looking at here was published as both “Polka Contre Danse” and just “Polka Contre”.  Unusually, it is attributed to a particular dancing master, Mr. Layland, who was active in London in the mid-19th century.  I’ve mentioned him before in the context of his mescolanzes.  That makes it very much an English dance, despite its appearance in a couple of American dance manuals.

    My first English source for the Polka Contre Danse, The Victoria Danse du Monde and Quadrille Preceptor, dates to the early 1870s, but I suspect that it actually dates back to the 1850s.  It actually appears earlier in two of the manuals of Boston musician/dance caller/publisher Elias Howe, the earlier of which is from 1862.  Howe was a collector and tended to throw dances from every book he collected into his own works, so I suspect there is an earlier English source somewhere, possibly by Layland himself.  Maybe someday I’ll find it.

    Until then, on with Polka Contre Danse!

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  • Susan’s Sociables

    When I first wrote about the quadrille figure called the Sociable almost seven years ago, I noted that some sources offered slightly different sets of figures, and at least two suggested that the choice of figures was up to the caller:

    “No positive rule as to what figure shall be called in the Quadrille Sociable.  The choice is left entirely to the prompter.”  (Brookes, L. De G.  Brookes on Modern Dancing.  New York, 1867)

    “Prompters often call figures in the ‘Sociable’ to suit their fancy, introducing the ‘Star Figure,’ ‘Grand Chain,’ etc.”  (De Garmo, William.  The Dance of Society.  New York, 1875)

    I rarely exercise the option to call variant figures; my habit has been to do the most common four-figure sequence twice over, once for the ladies to progress and once for the gentlemen, with an eight-bar “All chassez” and honors coda at the end.  Including introductory honors, this calls for a structure of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b.  Working with live musicians, I can have music played to fit this pattern exactly.  Or, if I am using the Sociable as the final figure of a quadrille, the short version with the progressive figures done only once (ladies progressing) is plenty, and since 8b + 32bx4 + 8b is a common finale structure, if necessary, it is easy to find a recording with that pattern.

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  • Waltzing Around

    A recent mailing list discussion centered on how to quickly teach people to do a "waltz-around", the style of country dance progression in which two couples waltz around each other once and a half times.  This is most famously part of the mid- to late-nineteenth-century Spanish Dance, as well as other American waltz contra dances (such as the German Waltz and Bohemian Waltz).  It dates back at least as far as the late 1810s to early 1820s in England, when Spanish dances were an entire genre of country dances in waltz time, and both they and ordinary waltz country dances featured this figure, sometimes under the names "poussette" or "waltze".  I expect it goes even further back on the European continent, but I haven't yet pursued that line of research.

    As a dancer, the waltz-around has always been one of those figures that I just…do.  I'd observed that it's difficult for beginners to master the tight curvature of the circle and making one and a half circles in only eight measures, but as an experienced waltzer, I've long been able to do it instinctively.  And I'd never broken down precisely what I did or worked out how to explain it to others.  

    So I suppose it's about time!

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  • Ladies leading, 1898

    Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about some of the tidbits of evidence of ladies or gentlemen dancing in same-gender couples in Regency-era ballrooms.  I’m returning to the topic of same-gender dancing with an interesting article I discovered in an issue of a late-nineteenth-century American dance magazine, The Two Step, published at the time by dancing master and author H. N. Grant, out of Buffalo, New York.

    The June, 1898, issue (Vol. 5, No. 47) includes a short essay on an important topic: “May a Lady Dance Backward.”  It opens with a strong statement in favor:

    Should a lady be taught to use the backward step in the waltz?

    Yes we say, most emphatically yes.

    That opens up all sorts of interesting questions, doesn’t it?  Were ladies not generally even taught to waltz backward?  Was that actually controversial?
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  • Prince Leopold’s Birthday Ball, 1859

    One of the most charming descriptions of a fancy dress ball in my collection is that of the event held at Buckingham Palace in honor of the sixth birthday of Queen Victoria's youngest son, Prince Leopold, on April 7, 1859.  This was a juvenile, or children's, ball, but, as we know from descriptions of the dancing lessons given to Victoria's children, the level of dancing skill even at young ages was considerably higher than one would expect from children today.  That said, it's not clear to me whether the youngest children really danced all the dances or whether that was left to the older ones, or perhaps the parents.

    The description I have was printed in The Albion, A Journal of News, Politics and Literature, on April 30, 1859.  The Albion was a weekly New York newspaper that covered British matters extensively and was read by expatriates.  The description was probably copied directly from a London newspaper.

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  • Newport Fancy Dress Ball, 1850

    The final fancy dress of the Newport summer season of 1850 occurred on Wednesday, September 4th.  It was covered by The Boston Herald on September 5th (“Grand Fancy Ball at Newport”, p. 4) and more extensively by The New York Herald on September 6th (“The Grand Fancy Dress Ball at Newport”, p. 1).  The bulk of the coverage was devoted to lists of attendees and their costumes, as is typical for fancy dress balls, but there are some other tidbits of useful information as well.  The New York Herald article is extremely lengthy, so I have not transcribed all of it.  The article from The Boston Herald is quite short, but not nearly as interesting.

    The ball was held at the rebuilt Ocean House, the original of which had opened in 1844, burned down, and been rebuilt.  This Ocean House was not the same as the modern Ocean House in Newport.  A different hotel by the same name opened in 1868, was demolished in 2005, and then rebuilt again in 2010.

    At the RhodeTour website, Dr. Brian Knoth writes about the first two Ocean Houses, with specific mention of the 1850 Fancy Dress Ball:

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  • Tracking the Mescolanzes

    The topic of mescolanzes, four-facing-four country dances, and whether the famous dance La Tempête was the only surviving member of the genre by the mid- to late nineteenth century, came up in an email exchange recently.  Mescolanzes are one of those dance genres for which I have spent years slowly accumulating examples, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about the format and where dances called mescolanzes appeared over the course of the nineteenth century.

    I’m going to limit this quick survey to more-or-less anglophone countries — England, America, Scotland, Canada, and Australia — since I’ve not yet collated all the information I have from other countries.  I’m also not going to discuss La Tempête specifically, since that is an enormous topic all on its own.  Here and now, I will only survey dances appearing under the name or classification “mescolanze” and its several (mis)spellings.

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  • Revisiting the Flirtation Figure

    Almost six and a half years ago, I reconstructed and briefly discussed the Flirtation Figure, which appeared in William Lamb’s How and What to Dance (London, 1903 or 1904) as a separate figure after the usual five figures of the first set of quadrilles.  My slightly revised reconstruction of Lamb’s figure:

    Flirtation Figure (8 bars + 32 bars x4 + 8 bars)
    8b     Introduction (not repeated)
    4b     Grand Circle: all take hands and forward and back
    4b     All turn partners two hands
    4b     All four ladies forward and back
    4b     All four gentlemen forward, turn, and bow to lady at their left (their corner lady)
    4b     Facing corners, all balance by stepping right, close left behind, step right, touch toe of left in front (1, 2, 3, 4); repeat to left
    4b     Turn corners two hands, ending in gentleman’s original place and taking closed hold
    8b     All galopade around the set (four-slide galop to each position, alternating over hands/over elbows)
    Repeat previous thirty-two bars three more times. After last repetition:
    8b     Grand Circle and turn partners two hands

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  • Starting the Waltz, Cellarius Style

    Several years ago I wrote about starting the “new waltz” of the late nineteenth century in the way recommended by Allen Dodworth, who suggested a preparatory measure of music in which the dancers move from the usual starting orientation for couple dances, gentleman facing the wall/lady facing the center of the room, to one in which the gentleman’s back is to line of dance, making it easier for him to accomplish a clean leap backward on the first step of the waltz, while the lady faces forward and can easily perform her forward leap.  I’d thought at the time to make that post part of a series addressing different ways recommended for starting various forms of waltz over the course of the nineteenth century, but for one reason or another never got back to the topic.

    Here’s another short installment in what is now a very drawn-out series.

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  • On evening parties with dancing, 1860

    The most fashionable as well as pleasant way in the present day to entertain guests is to invite them to evening parties, which vary in size from the “company,” “sociable,” “soiree,” to the party, par excellence, which is but one step from the ball.

    The entertainment upon such occasions may vary with the taste of the hostess or the caprice of her guests.  Some prefer dancing, some music, some conversations.  Small parties, called together for dramatical or poetical readings, are now fashionable, and very delightful.
    — The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness

    I first came across Florence Hartley’s The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (G. G. Evans: Philadelphia, 1860) via the July, 1861, issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, which excerpted the section on the etiquette for a lady hosting an evening party.  There is a matching section for the (female) guests at an evening party as well as sections for ladies hosting or attending balls.  I have spent a great deal of time over the years reading about mid-nineteenth century ballroom etiquette, but considerably less on that for more informal events.  I thus found Mrs. Hartley’s thoughts on the subject quite interesting.  It would be fun to host smaller events such as these, if one had both the sizable rooms and the servants that Mrs. Hartley assumes will be available or hired for the night.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

Email Susan

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