Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
This blandly named "Polish Dance" was published by expatriate English dancing master William George Wells in The danciad, or companion to the modern ball room in Montreal in 1832. I have my doubts about whether there is anything authentically Polish about it, but the dance itself is…interesting. Let me start with a transcription.
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POLISH DANCE
To be danced by an unlimited number of couples, and placed exactly in the same situation as for the Original Gallopade.
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.
Working my way through the waltz variations in Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903), here’s one that can fairly confidently be classified as a step rather than a sequence written for a particular piece of music. It’s actually quite interesting, though less for the step than for the fact that though at first glance it looks like a two-part sequence, it’s actually not. Gilbert specifically (and ungrammatically) wrote:
Repeat ad lib, commencing at the second part. At the termination of the side movement. Waltz at pleasure, introducing the second part at will.
In other words, waltz (the first part) for as long as you like, then do the second part (a set of sideways movements akin to a racket) for as long as you like. In short, use the second part as a variation in your waltzing. That’s in line with how I suspect many of these variations were actually used, but it’s unusual to see it stated so explicitly.
“Humming Bird Dance” is a hesitation waltz sequence which appeared in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen’s compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914). It is attributed to “Mr. Menancon”, who appears in the list of credits at the end of the second edition as “Elmond Menancon, 909 Elm Street, Manchester, N[ew] H[ampshire]”. I believe the first name ought to be “Edmond”, since a dancing master of that name is listed in Manchester city directories from 1906 and 1918. In the 1906 Manchester Directory, Edmond Menancon is listed separately as an artist, dancing master, and, interestingly, the sexton of a church. Here’s Menancon’s advertisement from page 819 of the 1906 directory:
The sexton position seems a somewhat odd fit for an artist-photographer-dance teacher; the triple career doesn’t seem to leave much time for a day job. Perhaps it was his father?
The Western Normal Newport was named after the Western Association Normal School Masters of Dancing, a professional organization for dancing masters in western North America. “Normal school” sounds odd to modern ears, but historically, it didn’t mean what we’d imagine today. A normal school was a teacher-training school, where the “norms” of teaching and subject material were taught; more information on normal schools in general may be found here. The Western Association Normal School was founded in 1894 under Canadian dancing master John Freeman Davis, its first president.
My only source for the Western Normal Newport is George Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903). Lopp was from the northwestern USA and may have been a member of the Normal School or at least aware of it. The variation’s name, as given in French by Lopp, was Le Western Normal Newport, attributed to l’Association de l’École normale des Maîtres de danse de l’Ouest.
Given that the school was founded in 1894, the Western Normal Newport was obviously created too late to appear in M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing, published in Portland, Maine, in 1890, from which Lopp cribbed so much of his own book.
The Ripple Galop and the Jersey are two galop variations found in both M. B. Gilbert’s Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp’s La Danse (Paris, 1903), a French translation of Gilbert with some additions and changes. Both variations use the late nineteenth-century American waltz-galop technique of a leap along the line of dance followed by a side step and a cut (or close of the feet) in the rhythm “1&2” rather than the slide-chassé of the galop, extending it into the “Newport” pattern of a leap along the line of dance followed by a series of side-closes, stretching the basic step-unit from one to two measures. The key difference is where the side steps and closes fall relative to the strong beats of the music:
galop: 1 (side) & (close) 2 (side)
waltz-galop: 1 (back/forward) & (side) 2 (cut/close)
The galop pattern ends in an open position. The waltz-galop normally does as well, but it can also be ended elegantly at the end of the music by a close of the feet rather than a cut. This alteration of the relationship of movements to music in dances of the “new waltz” family is what makes these variations interesting to me.
The generically named One Step Hesitation is a short hesitation waltz sequence that appeared in the second edition of the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis in late 1914. It is subtitled “As Recommended by St. Louis Association Dancing Masters”, and with no author listed, may have come from the hand of Clendenen himself.
Since the One Step Hesitation is almost entirely in the slowest possible type of hesitation (one step per bar of music), it calls for very fast waltz music or it will drag badly. I prefer 180 beats per minute and up for this type of hesitation waltz.
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!
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?
(more…)
The short story “Lyddy!”, by Thomas Egerton Wilks, was published in a London journal, The Young Lady’s Magazine, in 1837, its first year of publication, the works from which were collected in a single volume published in 1838.
Though its title is similar to that of other ladies’ magazines of the era, The Young Lady’s Magazine actually had much loftier ambitions:
…to concentrate every energy in the production, not only of such matter as may amuse the fancy, but at the same time tend to expand the mind, elevate the morals, refine the intellect, and awaken, — not the morbid sensibilities, too often produced by ill-selected fictions — but those pure, unhacknied feelings of the youthful heart, which are in themselves a mine of inexhaustible treasures, and which, by their development, shed a halo of enchantment around.
— Preface, p. iii
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Susan de Guardiola, Social Dance Historian
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