Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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Category: Victorian

  • 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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  • Waltz Step, Galop Time

    • Era: 1880s-1890s (America)

    In his sizable manual of couple dance variations, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert describes the Waltz-Galop succinctly as:

    Waltz step, Galop time

    While no other dancing master that I have found includes the waltz-galop by name, the accenting of a waltz step done in duple rather than triple time is discussed by Allen Dodworth in Dancing and its relations to education and social life (1885, reprinted several times through 1900) and is included in dances such as the turn-of-the-century Pasadena, and the idea that waltz steps can be transposed from triple to duple and vice-versa dates back as far as the sauteuse waltz of the first quarter of the 19th century.

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  • Lamb’s American Schottische

    English dance teacher William Lamb, in his Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London c1898-1900), published quite a few short dance sequences, most of limited interest to the average dancer.  His American Schottische has more potential than most of these because it does not involve any reverse-line-of-dance movement and thus can be easily used as a simple variation when dancing a late 19th-century schottische. 

    Despite the name, there is nothing specifically American about this particular sequence, and it does not seem to have been taken up by other writers/compilers of dance manuals, even those who otherwise plagiarized Lamb quite freely.  I suspect it was not a particular hit, perhaps never having any life in period outside the pages of Lamb's book.  Nonetheless, I find it quite danceable and an interesting break from more typical schottische patterns.

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  • Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance

    • Era: late 1890s-1900 England/France

    “Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance,” was invented by English dancing master R. M. Crompton, later to become the first president of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and a part of the early 20th-century movement to keep ballroom dance out of the hands of the “wrong” people, which primarily meant American, and especially African-American, influences.  That was all in the future in the 1890s, however, when this dance first appeared.  It may have first been published in Crompton’s own book, Theory and Practice of Modern Dancing (London, c1891).  Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Crompton’s work.  The dance, however, can be found in at least three other works of the late 19th century, attributed in each case to Crompton.

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  • The Très-Chic

    • Era: late 1890s-early 1900s
    “The Très-Chic is a dance for couples in six-eight time, and is of very animated and lively character.”

    With these words, William Lamb introduces “A new Round Dance for the Ball-Room.”  Lamb was a noted English dance teacher and writer who served as president of the British Association of Teachers of Dancing.  The Très-Chic appeared in his book Saxon’s Everybody’s Guide to Ball-Room Dancing (London, c1898-1900; it is listed in the 1901 English Catalogue of Books for those years), from which it was blatantly plagiarized by two dance writers publishing in the American Midwest in the first few years of the twentieth century, including A.C. Wirth in his Complete Quadrille Call Book (Chicago, 1902) and D.F. Jay in his ABC Guide to Ballroom Dancing (Chicago, c1900), both using Lamb’s language to describe the dance.  (Some biographical information about Wirth may be found in my earlier post on the Rye Waltz.)

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  • Mr. Newman’s Two-Step Variations

    • Era: circa 1900

    Given the popularity of the two-step in the early years of the 20th century, it is surprising how few variations were recorded for the dance.  But in his 1903 dance manual, A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing, Philadelphia dancing master Albert W. Newman included two short and easy two-step sequences, the “Glide Two Step” and the “Military Two Step.”

    The basic turn of the century two-step (not the same as either today’s country western “Texas Two-Step” or today’s “Nightclub Two-Step”) is a slide-close-slide, similar to the polka but performed smoothly with no hop, turning to the left or right as desired.  Newman specified that the “close” of the feet should be to third rear position, which happens fairly naturally if the leading foot is turned so that the toe points along the line of dance.  The steps are described below for the gentleman; the lady dances on opposite feet.

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Capering & Kickery

Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian

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