Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Victorian

  • Down East Breakdown

    • Era: late 1850s-1860s, America (New England)

    Down East Breakdown is an unusual Civil War-era American contra dance: unlike most of them, it is done in “mescolanze,” or four-facing-four, formation.  I have directions for it only in two manuals by Boston musician Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858), and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  Unlike many contra dances of the mid-century, it does not seem to have been picked up by later writers.

    The name of the dance is rather interesting.  “Down east,” in a New England context, refers to eastern Maine.  A “breakdown” in this era was a type of solo dance, like clogging, which was particularly associated with slave dancing and minstrelsy, as may be seen in works like Jig, Clog, and Breakdown Dancing Made Easy (New York, 1873).  An illustration at the American Antiquarian Society website, taken from the January 31, 1863, edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, shows “contraband children” dancing a breakdown.  The dance itself does not incorporate any kind of stepping or anything other than perfectly typical figures, however.

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  • Bricklayer’s Hornpipe

    • Era: 1850s-1890s, America (New England)

    Here’s an easy American contra dance of the Civil War era found in three Boston sources.  Two are manuals by Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858), and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862); the third is Professor L.H. Elmwell’s Prompter’s Pocket Instruction Book (Boston, 1892).

    The figures for the dance, as given by Elmwell:

    First couple cross over inside below second couple (4); Up on the outside and turn partners to places (4); First couple down the centre, back and cast off (8); First lady swing second gent (4); First gent swing second lady (4); Right and left (8).

    The earlier instructions from the two manuals by Howe are virtually identical except that he describes the second move as “up on the outside swing partner to place”, a distinction I will address below, and the swings of the first lady/second gentleman and first gentleman/second lady as “quite round”.

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  • Harvest Home

    • Era: American, late 1850s-early 1860s

    In commemoration of the American Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a seasonally appropriate dance from the American Civil War era, a country dance for a set of six couples.

    While I have not done a comprehensive search, I appear to have instructions for “Harvest Home” only in a pair of dance manuals by Elias Howe: Howe’s Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862), which include far more country dances than is typical of other dance manuals of the time period.  New England to this day retains a stronger country dance tradition, in the form of modern contra dance, than most other parts of the United States.

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  • Right & left: hands or not?

    By the mid-nineteenth century, the only American dance manuals that contain large quantities of contradances are those from the New England area.  Others may have a few here and there, but not the pages and pages of them, or entire manuals of nothing but contras.  And, alas for reconstructors looking back 150 years later, the authors simply don’t bother to explain how to do specific figures.  Presumably, everyone knew.

    For most figures this isn’t a particular problem; they’re self-evident from the name or unchanged from earlier eras.  But there is one figure that is especially ambiguous to dance historians, and that is “right and left” or “rights and lefts”.  The major reason for the ambiguity is good old Thomas Wilson, a dancing master in early nineteenth-century London and a prolific author.  Wilson wrote some of the most useful books on English country dance in all of dance history, with explanations, diagrams, and occasionally even steps for each figure.  But he had a somewhat unusual take on right and left.

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  • Star Schottische

    One of the myriad minor schottische variations described in M.B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (1890), is notable as the earliest appearance I’ve noticed of what has become the standard style for the first part of modern folk schottische: three running steps forward in “military position” (as described in my previous post, “À la Militaire“) rather than the step-close-step of the nineteenth century dance.

    Gilbert attributes the Star Schottische to W.F. Mittman.

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  • The Newport

    A new waltz or redowa variation pops up in a few of the manuals of the very late nineteenth century.  Presumably named after the wealthy resort town, the Newport appears in slightly different versions in different manuals, but the common element appears to be a series of quick sliding steps.

    Apparently the Newport was too new to be included in New York dancing master Allen Dodworth’s Dancing and its relations to education and social life  (New York, 1885).  The earliest and clearest description I have found is in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in Portland, Maine, in 1890.  His version, included “by permission of Russ B. Walker,” is essentially an ornamented version of the standard waltz of the late nineteenth century, with two rapid slides to the side rather than one in each bar for a “step-side-close-side-close” sequence rather than the usual “step, side, close.”  A half-turn is made on each bar, just as in the regular late nineteenth-century waltz, with a complete turn every two bars.

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  • Le Triangle

    Subtitled Nouveau Quadrille, Le Triangle is not actually a quadrille in the literal sense of a dance involving facing couples.  It was composed by F. Paul and published in his manual, Le Cotillon, in Paris in 1877 and is danced by three couples rather than four, arranged in the form of a triangle.  Paul composed it to address the difficulty of finding four couples for the quadrille croisé of the time.  He adds modestly that he does not intend to impose it upon dancers, but gives the description only as a proposal.  I have never seen Le Triangle in any other source; it may never have been danced outside of Paul’s immediate circles.

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  • Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The Bowdoin

    This is the final post in this month’s little series of easy and useful late nineteenth century waltz variations from M.B. Gilbert’s 1890 manual, Round Dancing.  The first three posts in the series may be found here, here, and here.

    Gilbert notes of the Bowdoin that he “applied these movements to the Waltz during the seasons of 1888-89, and found the application very pleasing.”

    Once again, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding the waltz steps, with my preference being for the smoother transitions allowed by the gliding version.

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  • Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Le Metropole

    Returning once again to my short series on some of the more useful waltz variations published by M.B. Gilbert in his 1890 manual, Round Dancing, here’s a third simple variation for the late nineteenth century waltz.  The first and second posts in the series may be found here and here.

    Le Metropole uses the same simple sliding and waltzing steps of the Gavotte Glide but mixes them in a different way.  Gilbert attributes it to H. Fletcher Rivers.

    Like the Gavotte Glide, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding.  And as with the Gavotte Glide, its gliding feel makes me lean toward the latter for the sake of smoother transitions.

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  • Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Gavotte Glide

    This is the second in my short series on some of the more useful waltz variations published by M.B. Gilbert in his 1890 manual, Round Dancing. The first post in the series may be found here.

    Of all of the variations in Gilbert, this simple mix of sliding steps and waltz turns is probably the easiest and the one I use most frequently in teaching new dancers.  Gilbert attributes it to “Constantine Carpenter, Son, and Charles C. Martel.”

    As with the Diagonal Waltz, this variation will work either leaping or simply gliding, though its gliding feel makes me lean toward the latter for smoother transitions within the variation.

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  • Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Diagonal Waltz

    By the end of the nineteenth century, American dancing masters such as M.B. Gilbert were coming up with long lists of little waltz variations of dubious utility and doubtful popularity.  Many of these are minor variations on a few simple themes, often interpolating sideways slides and chassé steps between measures of waltz.  I’m going to do a short series on some of the more useful and leadable of these variations this month, all taken from the pages of Gilbert’s immense manual, Round Dancing, published in Maine in 1890 and incorporating many variations from the 1870s and 1880s.  Calling them “Victorian” is a bit of misnomer, since these are essentially American variations.

    The Diagonal Waltz does not actually involve anything other than the normal step of the “new” waltz (step-side-close pattern) of the late nineteenth century.  It is really just a sequence incorporating natural and reverse turns in such a way as to never make a complete turn in either direction.  This is so basic a waltz skill that similar sequences are incorporated into most twentieth century versions of the box-step or Viennese waltz as well.

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  • The Invention of the York?

    A couple of months ago I described the late 19th-century waltz-time move known as the York, which incorporated mazurka-style heel-clicks and was considered a variation of the polka mazurka.  At the time, the earliest source I had located was M.B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in 1890, where the dance was included “by permission of E.W. Masters,” possibly its creator.  An interesting article from The New York Times, dated September 9, 1885, both brings the date of the dance back a few years and provides an amusing anecdote about the dance’s possible origin.

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  • The Yale University York

    • Era: 1890s-very early 1900s

    The Yale University York is one of those dance variations that probably had a short to nonexistent life outside the studio of its creator and a few other dancing masters.  Unlike the original York (described here), it seems to appear only in two sources: Melvin Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903), much of which is merely a direct translation of Gilbert.  Both Gilbert and Lopp attribute it to A.M. Loomis.  Despite its obscurity and probable lack of popularity in its own time, I am devoting a post to it primarily because as a Yale alumna I am charmed whenever anyone names a dance after my alma mater.

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  • The York

    • Era: 1890s-very early 1900s

    (Edited 6/3/24 to add: more information about the somewhat earlier (c1885) origin of the York may be found at my articles “The Invention of the York” and “Revisiting La Russe“)

    The York is a waltz dance in the redowa/mazurka family which appeared in several American dance manuals in the last decade of the 19th century.  The earliest reference I have located is in Melvin Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), where he includes it “by permission of E.W. Masters,” possibly the creator.  George Washington Lopp, who reprinted much of Gilbert in La Danse (Paris, 1903) directly attributes it to Masters.   (The underlined part of the first sentence of this paragraph added 12/22/2023 to make it clear at the start that this is a redowa/mazurka, not a waltz, and a distinct dance, not just a variation.)

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  • The Polish Galop

    • Era: 1880s-early 1900s, New England & Paris

    The so-called Polish Galop, which is neither Polish nor necessarily a galop, is one of those odd little variations that was the creation of a single dancing master and was not generally taken up by others.  It is not Polish in origin; the name comes from the heel-clicking move it incorporates, which is typical of Polish dances such as the mazurka.  Its creator, Maine dancing master and author M.B. Gilbert, explains in Round Dancing, published in 1890, that

    The movements of this dance were arranged by me for special use in children’s classes, and I found the combination a pleasant innovation.

    I also found it pleasant; it’s actually slightly less “busy” than a regular galop.  And its ambiguity on where the turn (if any) happens is interestingly similar to that of the racket.

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  • Schottische à Pas Sauté

    By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as the standard Victorian couple dances were becoming somewhat stale, there was a flurry of innovation among dancing masters attempting to come up with new variations, most of which do not appear to have caught on widely.  In M.B. Gilbert’s 1890 tome, Round Dancing, he describes a variation, the Schottische à Pas Sauté, which resembles the old “doubling” of the schottische parts (as described in my review of the early schottische) in consisting only of “step-hops” but employs the recently stylish “military position”, as described in my previous post, “À la Militaire“, rather than using the closed position of the earlier era throughout.  Gilbert footnotes this variation as the Hop Waltz, harking back to the jeté waltz of the Regency era.

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  • The Two-Slide Racket

    • Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

    I’m going to wrap up the year at Kickery with a different kind of racket waltz, the two-slide racket.  This variant appears in at least two major and two minor sources in late nineteenth-century America, as listed at the bottom of this post.  In the minor sources, the Cartier and Wehman books, which are compilations of dances from other sources, it is labeled “The Racquet”.

    Both the two major sources, Dodworth and Gilbert, list the two-slide racket as a redowa- or mazurka-time dance, implying a different accent in the 3/4 music than in a regular waltz.

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  • The Racket Waltz, or The Society

    • Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

    The simplest description of the racket waltz is that it is the step of the one-slide racket converted to waltz time, with the extra beat of music per measure added to the initial slide.  Edna Witherspoon, in The Perfect Art of Modern Dancing (1894), gives it the alternate title “The Society” and notes that “if thoughtlessly executed, it is a most ungraceful and unattractive dance.”  Allen Dodworth, in Dancing and its Relation to Education and Social Life (1885), adds that “The racket, in this accent, is that unfortunate dance known as the “Society,” and is the medium through which not a few show an entire absence of good taste in motion.”  Honestly, it’s not that bad!  It does not seem to have been quite as popular or well-known as the galop–time rackets I described earlier this summer, but it is an easy dance that works well to brisk waltz music.

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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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  • Alternating the One- and Three-Slide Rackets

    • Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

    Combining the one-slide rackets and three-slide rackets previously described creates an interestingly varied dance which is referred to by the prominent late-nineteenth-century dancing master Melvin B. Gilbert simply as the Racket, with no further descriptor.  The unadorned term is used by other writers to refer to several different variations in both 2/4 and 3/4 time, however, leaving us with unwieldy labels such as Allen Dodworth’s “Alternating the One Slide and Three Slide to Galop.”

    Whatever one may call it, the sequence is not difficult once both the one-slide and three-slide rackets have been mastered.  Conceptually, one simply alternates two bars of one with two bars of the other to build an eight-bar sequence.  For the one-slide racket, two bars will be moving to the left and right (in whichever order); for the three-slide racket, two bars means moving either to the left or to the right.  So sequences may be built as follows:

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  • The Three-Slide Racket

    • Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

    The three-slide racket extends the two-bar repeat pattern of the one-slide racket previously described into a four-bar pattern which has a more galop-like feel and is somewhat easier to initiate.  It is described in the major dance late-nineteenth-century dance manuals of M.B. Gilbert and Allen Dodworth and in two minor compilation manuals, one of which (Cartier’s Practical Illustrated Waltz Instructor) names it “The Wave.”

    The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance.  Like the one-slide racket, the three-slide racket follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

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  • The Galop Racket or One-Slide Racket

    • Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

    The galop racket or one-slide racket is the simplest of the various rackets and is described under  both names in different sources.  In one Parisian manual it is simply “La Raquette,” though most other sources agree that “the” racket is a compound sequence mixing two different racket rhythms.  Prominent New England dancing master M.B. Gilbert explained it simply as “Pas de Basque sidewise” in 2/4 time.

    The instructions below are for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  The dancers start in a normal late-nineteenth-century ballroom hold with joined hands angled forward at a diagonal along the line of dance.  The dance follows a zig-zag track along the line of dance; there is no turning involved.

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  • Introducing the racket

    The racket, or racquet, is one of the major new couple dances that began appearing in American dance manuals in the early 1880s and lingered into the beginning of the twentieth century.  It spread to France in the mid- to late 1890s.  I have found no information on its origins or reference to any creator.

    The racket is a lively dance that combines sideways slides and quick cuts of the feet back and forth.  It can be danced in both galop (2/4) and waltz (3/4) time, though galop time appears to be the default.  It was one of the few of the myriad couple dance variations of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to make it into manuals like Allen Dodworth’s Dancing and its Relation to Education and Social Life (New York, 1885, reprinted 1900), which for the most part included only the most commonly-found couple dances.  (He did include one of his own invention, the Knickerbocker, and the up-and-coming Boston.)

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  • Five Step Schottische

    • Era: 1870s(?)-1890s (America)

    The Five Step Schottische, as described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his tome of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later by Marguerite Wilson in her oft-reprinted Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899),  squeezes five movements, rather than the standard four, into each bar of schottische for an interesting variation which alternates sideways slides and half-turns for a sequence similar to that of waltz variations such as the contemporary Le Metropole (also included in Gilbert’s manual) or the later Five-Step Boston described by Philadelphian Albert Newman in 1914.  Putting this combination into schottische rhythm makes for an interesting but not overly complicated dance worth resurrecting by the modern late-19th-century dance reenactor.

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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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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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