Capering & Kickery

The Way it Ended, 1855

I came across this story in a California newspaper, The Weekly Placer Herald, and didn't find it particularly believable.  But it was not original to the Herald; the attribution at the end is to the Albany Dutchman, which seems to have been more of a weekly humor publication than a newspaper.  Per the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website, it described itself  in 1849 as "A weekly newspaper-devoted to fun, literature, good advice, women and other luxuries."  I don't have any way to check the attribution at the moment, as the Albany Dutchman doesn't seem to be online, but that fits with my impression that this is a tall tale, not an actual incident.  It nonetheless makes a light-hearted ending to my month of masquerades!

In the story, two friends, Bob and Frank, lie to Bob's wife about his having to help a sick uncle.  In reality, they are sneaking off to a masquerade ball.  While Bob is a married man, Frank is "a roue, and as a matter of course is a great favorite with the ladies—roues always are." 

A Fancy Dress Party (from A Few Friends), 1864

A Few Friends, by Korman Lynn, was serialized in nine parts in Godey's Lady's Book during the year 1864.  The serial doesn't have a lot of plot; it describes eight evenings of a group of friends gathering together to, for the most part, play parlor games.  It's great for anyone who wants to research mid-nineteenth century parlor games, which are described in elaborate detail, but the only section of any real interest to me is the final one, in which the friends gather for a fancy dress party.

To pick up the story at this point, it is only necessary to know that the kind and generous Ben Stykes has been quietly pursuing the lively Mary Gliddon from the beginning of the story, though a certain Mr. Hedges, a young man from Liverpool, is also interested in her.

Even a single part of the story is too long for me to transcribe here, but I'll quote the costume descriptions, some of which are detailed and unusual, and the resolution of the romance.

A Fancy Dress Hop at West Point, 1865

On Saturday, September 9, 1865, The New York Times published an account of a fancy dress "hop" given by the ladies of Cozzens' Hotel in West Point, New York, home of the famous U. S. Military Academy. 

Cozzens', established in 1849, was a prominent hotel near the Academy.  The original building was destroyed by fire in the March of 1861 but quickly rebuilt.  The image below is a late-nineteenth-century print by Max Egalu of the view of the Hudson River from the hotel; the original is in the collection of the Boston Public Library.


With its ready supply of eager cadets from the Academy, Cozzens' was a popular site for dances.  In 1859, an article in Harper's Weekly explained that:

"...the rigors of military etiquette are mitigated thrice a week by balls or hops, which are given by the cadets to their friends and guests at Cozzens’s Hotel and elsewhere in the neighborhood. These gay parties are justly famed among the fair sex; for better and more indefatigable dancers than the cadets are not to be found even in New York. Pretty girls who go to West Point to spend a few days in the bracing air, and enjoy the lovely Hudson scenery, invariably declare that they never enjoyed any ball in their life so much as the Cadet Hops."

        --- Harper's Weekly, September 3, 1859

 

The article was accompanied by an engraving of such a "hop", specifically described as "a scene familiar to the happy people who spend summer days at Cozzens's at West Point."

 

The original may be seen at archive.org (engraving, article).

 

A more detailed history of the hotel may be found at The News of the Highlands.

Hygeia Hotel Grand Fancy Ball, 1858

"The Grand Fancy Ball at Old Point Comfort-- All the F. F. V.'s out in their Native Splender [sic]", an article covering a fancy dress ball held at the Hygeia Hotel in Old Point Comfort, a seaside town in Virginia, was published on page five of The New York Times on August 30, 1858.  The "F. F. V.'s" were the "First Families of Virginia," the wealthiest and most socially prominent families; more discussion of the term and its history may be found here.  All quotes below are from the Times article unless otherwise credited; a full transcription is at the end of the post.

The Hygeia Hotel, shown above in an image from c1861 (click to enlarge), courtesy of The Library of Congress.  (The Hygeia is the long building with the colonnades.)  It was originally built in 1822 as housing for construction workers at Fort Monroe.  The original hotel was razed during the Civil War and a new hotel built on the site, which was then demolished in 1902.

The original Hygeia grew and grew:

Over the following 25 years [after 1833], the owners constructed wings housing more than 200 rooms, as well as various detached buildings for billiards, pistol shooting and bowling. Guests such as President John Tyler and Edgar Allan Poe came for the healthful sea breezes, sea bathing and seafood, not to mention a social scene so fashionable that Old Point became a favorite setting for short stories and novels.

By 1858, the Hygeia was entertaining more than 5,000 guests a year.

-- "Hampton Archive: The South's Best Resort", October 4, 2009

Among its more famous guests was Edgar Allen Poe, who stayed there a month before his death in 1849, famously reciting his poems, "The Raven", "Annabel Lee", and "Ulalume" in the moonlight from the hotel veranda.

CD Review: The Grand Victorian Ballroom

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

Shaler's Brigade Reunion Ball, 1888

On June 14, 1888, The New York Times reported that the members of the Shaler's Brigade Association, a Civil War brigade under the leadership of General Alexander Shaler, had the previous day dedicated four monuments at the field of Gettysburg.  The dedication was part of a twenty-five-year reunion (since the Battle of Gettysburg) for surviving members of the brigade.  The event was described in extensive detail (almost two hundred pages of it) in Shaler's Brigade. Survivors of the Sixth Corps. Reunion and monument dedications, at Gettysburg, June 12th, 13th and 14th, 1888, from which the quotations below are taken.  More about Shaler's command and its activities during the battle may be found in Shaler's Wikipedia biography.

Of interest to dance history is that on the evening of June 13th, after dedicating the monuments, a ball and reception were held:  

...at 9 P. M. all wended their way from headquarters to the Rink Building, a large, commodious structure, where was being held the grand Complimentary Ball and Reception, tendered by the 23d Pennsylvania, in honor of the event. The ball-room was appropriately decorated for the occasion, with two stages erected at opposite sides of the room, for the Bands; while, from the front of the building was a transparency, emblazoned with the legend, "The 23d Pennsylvania Welcomes Shaler's Brigade and their Friends."  One hundred and fifty written invitations had been sent to the good people of Gettysburg, inviting "Yourself and ladies" to the Camp-fire, the Dedication and the Complimentary Ball and Reception, and when Colonel John F. Glenn, as Grand Conductor of the Ball, led off in the Grand March, with his good wife, there followed at least twelve hundred people— some four hundred ladies being in the line; the G. A. R. Band, of Gettysburg, playing the dancing music, while the McKnightstown Cornet Band gave the promenades, so that music was in the air a tall times. An original, unique and very appropriate ball program was distributed, containing thirty-six dances, wherein are the names of the regiments of the brigade, its winter camps, and actions in which it had participated were embraced, as a souvenir of the occasion; the ladies receiving a specially decorated one in silken corded pencil and bow of ribbon. Everybody got one to carry home, while two thousand handsome programs proper, containing the dances and promenades, were passed around for use in the festivities. (pp. 89-90)

Of particular note:

• That's an enormous attendance, and the gender imbalance is fascinating: at least twelve hundred people in the Grand March, but only four hundred ladies?  Were all the rest men marching together?  That seems appropriate for soldiers, but around four hundred extra men at a ball?  Wow...
  
  
• Alternating dancing and promenading, with a different band for each, was a fairly common ball format in late nineteenth-century America.  I have seen many dance cards with this format.

• The dual programs: one as a souvenir, and one to take home.  That sounds practical, doesn't it?  But it's complicated!

CD Review: North & South

I received the CD North & South: Forgotten Music from the American Civil War (Gaslantern Records, 2013) and its accompanying sheet music as a birthday gift this year, and a very lovely gift it was!  Sixteen new pieces of historical music, beautifully played by the Orchestra of the Gilded Age, conducted by Jeffrey Hunter, many of them suitable for dancing!  

The actual disc features a gorgeous historical battle scene, but there are no real liner notes included.  Happily, almost all the information one could want appears on the album website: not merely dates and lengths, but composers, background notes, and even the musical key of each piece. 

This is a "listening" CD, not made specifically for dancers, but many of the pieces will work for dancing.  As usual, I've gone through the album track by track and made notes about which pieces are danceable and for what.  

Of special note: the album is divided into two themes, "North" and "South", with the pieces for each named in honor of particular Union or Confederate leaders or otherwise connected to one side.  If one's dancers or listeners are apt to find such celebratory naming problematic, be careful which half you select from!

Aurora Waltz / Hungarian Waltz - Contra Dance

It's been quite some time since I've added a nineteenth-century American contra dance to Kickery.  Here's a waltz contra from the ever-useful Elias Howe that, with only a few bars of turning waltz, is an easy dance for beginners.  The set of figures appears in near-identical form in at least four of Howe's numerous dance manuals: the Complete ball-room handbook (1858), The pocket ball-room prompter (1858), and the American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (1862 and 1866). 

The original text:

First couple balance, cross over and go down outside below two couples — first couple balance again and waltz up to place — down the centre, back and cast off — swing six

In the two 1858 manuals, the figures appear under the name "Aurora Waltz", and in the 1862 and 1866 books, they appear under "Hungarian Waltz".  I think that as with earlier country dances, the names actually belong to tunes, rather than the dance figures, and I have no special preference as to which tune and name should be used.  Very similar figures (minus the waltz up the center and with a right and left instead of the swing six) appear at least as far back as the 1850s as non-waltz contra dance figures (under several different names) in Howe's and other manuals.  It looks to me like Howe just made minor tweaks to a common set of figures to take advantage of the waltz music.

Megunticook Reel

Megunticook Reel is a mid-nineteenth century American contra dance that first appears in at least two editions of The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons: the second edition, published in 1856, and the "Vest Pocket Edition" copyright 1862 and published 1863, which is available online here.  The original introduction was signed by "W. H. Q.", presumed to be one William Henry Quimby (1831-1857).  The posthumous Vest Pocket Edition has additional unsigned introductory material.  It is likely that the dance appeared in the first edition as well, but I don't have a copy of that one to check.

There appears to be no tune by the name "Megunticook Reel", so the name presumably belongs to the dance.  Maine is home to Mount Megunticook, Megunticook Lake, and the Megunticook River, from one or all of which the dance takes its name.  The photo at left, from SummitPost.Org, shows a view of Megunticook Lake from an overlook on Mount Megunticook.

There are three other sources for the dance, all from New England.  Eben's Order Book of Dancing (New Hampshire, 1877) is cited by Ralph Page as his source for the figures.  Page's outline of the dance was published in 1951 in Northern Junket, Vol. 8, No. 3.  I don't have a copy of Eben's either, but judging from Page's writeup, I doubt that it differs substantially from the Quimby one.  

The dance also turns up in Howe's New American Dancing Master (Boston, 1882 and 1892) with text identical to the Quimby one other than punctuaton.  The 1892 edition has only minor changes from the 1882 one.  It's interesting that, as far as I can tell, the dance does not appear in any earlier books by Elias Howe.  California Reel has the same publication history (Quimby and late Howe), though I don't know whether or not it appears in Eben's.

Gone with the Wind (novel), 1936

I was a young teenager and knew exactly nothing about historical dance when I first read Margaret Mitchell's famous novel Gone with the Wind (1936) several decades ago.  Rereading it recently, I was almost too distracted by the nauseating racism and the ridiculously sanitized portrayal of slavery to pay attention to the dancing.  

Many words have been written about how problematic Gone with the Wind is from a historical perspective, and I won't rehash those issues here.  But I do want to talk about the dancing, which is surprisingly accurate for a novel coming out of an era when dance history as a discipline was in its infancy.  This commentary applies only to the novel; I haven't seen the movie in decades either, though I will try to rewatch it sometime soon and see what I think of the dancing on film.  

I haven't done a lot of reading on Mitchell, but even the basic information available online reveals a few pertinent details about her life.  She was a debutante in Atlanta in the 1920s, and apparently quite a flirt.  She is said to have performed the notorious Apache dance at a 1921 ball, including a kiss with her partner, thoroughly shocking Atlanta society.  (Young, Elizabeth. Disarming the Nation: women's writing and the American Civil War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. p. 243.)

As a child, she had access to firsthand accounts from relatives of the years of the Civil War and the following Reconstruction era, and for her few years in her twenties she was a journalist, writing feature stories for The Atlanta Journal.  These experiences could have given her the knowledge and research skills to write accurately about the dancing of the mid-nineteenth century, which is not always the case in historical fiction.

And, to my surprise and pleasure, the dancing in Gone with the Wind is actually within the bounds of historical possibility for the 1860s and 1870s.  In this post, I'll go through the significant dance references in the novel.  

All quotations are from the online edition at the University of Adelaide (Australia), which has no page numbering.  I'll give chapter references, and the exact quotes can be found by searching the text.

Flower Girl's Dance

Flower Girl's Dance is an American Civil War-era contra dance that I remember dancing way back in the early 1990s when I first started doing mid-nineteenth-century dance.  But the version we did does not actually match that found in any source I've ever seen.  And it's easy to see why: the versions given in the sources don't actually work very well.  And now that I've reconstructed the California Reel, I have a little theory about why that is.

The earliest sources I have for Flower Girl's Dance are Elias Howe's two 1858 books, the Pocket Ball-Room Prompter and the Complete Ball-Room Handbook.  I strongly suspect that all the later sources were copying to some degree from Howe.  So let's look at Howe's instructions:

FLOWER GIRL'S DANCE.
(Music: Girl I left behind me.)
Form as for Spanish Dance. All chassa to the right, half balance--chassa back, swing four half round--swing four half round and back--half promenade, half right and left--forward and back all, forward and pass to next couple (as in the Haymakers).

There are some minor differences of spelling and punctuation, but the wording is essentially the same across almost forty years of Howe publications.  Taken at face value with the hash marks setting off eight-bar musical strains, this yields a 40-bar dance:

8b    All chassé to the right, half balance
8b    Chassé back, swing four half round
8b    Swing four half round and back
8b    Half promenade, half right and left
8b    Forward and back, forward and pass through

40 bars is an unusual length, but not unheard of.  But there are worse problems here:

"Pioneer dance" in Iowa

The Lyon Campaign in Missouri: Being a History of the First Iowa Infantry was written by Eugene F. Ware as a memoir primarily of his three months of military service in 1861 during the early days of the American Civil War, though the first several chapters cover life in Iowa in the preceding decades.  It was published in 1907, and while parts of it were based on Ware's journals, I believe the discussion of dance found in one chapter to be more what Ware remembered in 1907 than a contemporaneous account.  I don't regard it as reliable documentation for details of dance from 1861, but I feel reasonably confident that the broad strokes are accurate.

Before going into what Ware had to say, let me give a little background.  

The 1st Iowa Infantry operated for about three months, from mid-May to mid-August, 1861, and fought in Missouri, including the Battle of Wilson's Creek, under the command of General Nathaniel Lyon.  Before that, however, during the mustering and training, Ware and his fellow soldiers had access to civilian pursuits, and Ware was invited to a ball.

In 1861, Iowa was a frontier state, right at the border where states gave way to territories.  This is very obvious on the map below (click to enlarge) of the United States at the beginning of the Civil War (source: Maps, Etc.).  Iowa is right in the middle, where pink (Union states) meets orange (territories).

Ware called the dances he discussed "pioneer dances", which reflected this aspect of Iowa's status. 

German immigration also figures prominently in Ware's recounting.  That's a huge topic (covered in some detail here), but the most critical point is that in the 1840s and 1850s, almost 1.5 million Germans immigrated to the USA (see the chart here) and became a significant part of the expanding cities and settlements of the northern USA from Pennsylvania westward.  Naturally, they brought their culture, including dance and music, with them.

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.

But recently, I've been faced with the dual problems of calling the Sociable as a freestanding figure, meaning I prefer to call a longer figure to balance the time spent forming sets, and using recorded music, which is rarely to be found in the simplest long-Sociable pattern of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b.  This means either spending time editing a recording to fit the dance or changing my calling to fit the recording.  Editing music is a pain, so, since I have the option, historically speaking, of changing the figures, that is the approach I prefer.

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!

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:

When the original Ocean House opened on Bellevue and East Bowery in 1844, it instantly rivaled the most luxurious European hotels. The Ocean House offered summer visitors topnotch accommodations, fine-dining, and a variety of attractions. A Newport Mercury article in 1884 reminisced about "Old Time Newport" highlighting the new Ocean House and the hundreds of people assembling daily and nightly to the music of the "celebrated Germania Band."

Although the original Ocean House burned down one year after its opening, a larger and grander replacement was ready for the summer season of 1846 to host masquerade balls, cotillions, and Saturday night dances known as “hops.” At the time, fashionable dances like the polka, redowa, and cotillion were all the rage: “morning noon and night the whirl went on.”

In 1850, following their very successful first summer in Newport, the Germania helped close out the season with a “Fancy Ball” at the Ocean House. The Germania opened the ball with a late-evening march, dinner was served at midnight, and dancing continued through sunrise the next morning. Germania conductor Carl Bergmann’s composition “Fancy Ball Polka Redowa” was published the following year. 

Other than being fancy dress, the overall organization and format of the ball (as well as the band, music, and attendees) were quite similar to a similar end-of-summer ball held in Newport the following year.

Quotes below are labeled (NYH) and (BH) for The New York Herald and The Boston Herald, respectively.

Kentucky Reel

Earlier this month I saw and greatly enjoyed Love and Friendship, the adaptation of Jane Austen's short epistolatory novel Lady Susan.  There's not actually a dance scene in the original story, but they squeezed a brief one into the film.  I'll defer full commentary on the scene until I can get the DVD and watch it a couple more times, but the brief version is that it was an odd and, as far as I know, ahistorical variation of Sir Roger de Coverley in which partners stood alternately proper and improper, resulting in lines that alternated gentlemen and ladies and diagonals that involved two people of the same gender.  You can see it for about a second at 1:26 in the trailer here.  

While I'm waiting for the DVD release, I'll free-associate to another country, era, and dance.  I promise, this does have some connection to Love and Friendship!

The Tempest

The first thing to know about "The Tempest" is that, despite the name, it is not a version of "La Tempête".  The latter is a different dance with different music and a much longer and more exotic pedigree.

"Tempest" is a mid-nineteenth-century American contra dance with a delightfully unusual formation, as shown at left in a (relatively) modern illustration from Ricky Holden's The Contra Dance Book (1956).  The squares represent gentlemen and the circles, ladies.  There are earlier illustrations, but this is the only one I've found that shows the dance in action.

Descriptions of the formation are very clear that the dancers line up couple facing couple, widely spaced, with the frequent suggestion of six to eight couples on each side, though there's no reason beyond the length of dancing time that there can't be more.  

The dance is started off by the two couples at the head of each line peeling inward and going down the middle four abreast, as can be seen in the diagram.  As those two couples progress down the set, each pair of couples reaches the top, waits out once, and then turns into the line of four to begin the dance in turn.  This is the standard early progression style for country dances, as described in detail here.  By the mid-nineteenth century, however, it was not unheard of for multiple couples to start simultaneously in a country dance.  Boston musician-caller-author Elias Howe, whose books are, collectively, one of the major sources for "Tempest", was quite explicit about this.  So it would not be unreasonable to start multiple lines of four simultaneously.  The dance would continue until all couples have had a chance to rise to the top of a set, dance down it, and return to their original places.

Twin Sisters (2 of 2)

As I noted in my previous post on Twin Sisters, which should be read before this one, I had no luck finding a tune called "Twin Sisters".  But there are two other names regularly associated with Twin Sisters: Land of Sweet Erin and The Merry Dance.  Searching for those produced some interesting results.

The Traditional Tune Archive states that "Land of Sweet Erin" is an old Irish jig with a variety of different titles, with the name "Land of Sweet Erin" unique to Elias Howe's books.  That is incorrect; the music was printed under that title in A Collection of Country Dances and Cotillions arranged for the pianoforte (Boston: G. Graupner, c1808-1811).  It includes a set of contra dance figures completely different from the Twin Sisters ones.  Per the extremely useful database Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1710-1830 (DFIA index), another set of figures, only slightly different from the Graupner ones, appear under that title in a c1800 manuscript of dance figures.  And the equally useful Early American Secular Music and Its 
European Sources, 1589–1839: An Index (EASMES) gives three New England music manuscript cites for the tune under that name, with the earliest being a 1795 manuscript from Connecticut.

Howe may have picked up both tune and title from the Graupner publication or, since the tune was apparently circulating under that name in New England, gotten them from another fiddler in his youth.  His first publication of "Land of Sweet Erin", with no dance figures attached, seems to have been in a trio of 1843 music instruction books (School for the Flute, School for the Clarionet, and School for the Violin).  It is included in the 1851 reprint of School for the Clarionet, again without figures, and in a music book published by Oliver Ditson & Company, The Home Circle (Boston, 1859) with a different set of contra dance figures.  The same figures reappear under the "Land of Sweet Erin" title (without music) in Schell's Prompting: How to do it (Boston, 1890).  And the tune turns up outside New England as well; in The Welcome Guest (New York, 1863), it is used, as "Land of Sweet Erin", for a quadrille figure.  I have not even tried to trace it under all its other possible names.

It is clear that "Land of Sweet Erin" was not exclusively attached to the Twin Sisters contra figures.  So how did they come to be linked together?  That seems somewhat more likely to have been Howe's doing.

Twin Sisters (1 of 2)

"Country dances are usually known by the name of the music to which the figures are set."
       --Thomas Hillgrove, A complete practical guide to the art of dancing (New York, 1863)

As country (contra) dancing faded from its former domination of the most fashionable ballrooms in favor of quadrilles and couple dances, Hillgrove's statement reflected the transition in progress from the interchangeability of country dance figures and tunes earlier in the century to more fixed pairings of music and dance as the repertoire shrank to a small set.  Many of these survivors would become today's "chestnuts".  

But in this particular case, I think Hillgrove may be incorrect.  I've found no tune called "Twin Sisters", and since the dance has a history under a different name, I would speculate that it acquired its popular title because of its opening figure. in which two ladies take hands and dance together.

Twin Sisters was well-known enough in the mid-nineteenth century to appear on a list of a "portion of the country dances still in vogue" included by name only, without figures, by Lawrence De Garmo Brookes in his Brookes on Modern Dancing (New York, 1867):

HULL'S VICTORY.
DEVIL'S DREAM.
LADIES' TRIUMPH.
HEWITT'S FANCY.
PORTLAND FANCY.
TWIN SISTERS.
CIRCASSIAN CIRCLE.
CAMPTOWN HORNPIPE.
ETC., ETC., ETC.

The figures are not particularly complicated, but its appearance in such a short list makes it worth some attention.

Little Carrie's Favorite Galop

"Little Carrie's Favorite Galop" appeared in the music book Howe's Drawing Room Dances, published by Oliver Ditson & Company in 1859 for the Boston musician-caller-publisher-author Elias Howe.  The figures published with the music were intended as a single quadrille figure, which I was asked to reconstruct for a mid-nineteenth century performing group.  The figures themselves are standard ones, but correlating them with the music makes coming up with a definitive reconstruction a bit of a challenge.

Here are the music and figures as they appear in Howe's Drawing Room Dances.  Click the image to enlarge it.

There are two underlying problems in reconstructing the figures to "Little Carrie":

• The figures are laid out ambiguously on the score.
• The five eight-bar figures are not an obvious fit with music of sixteen-bar strains.

To get a workable reconstruction, one can either alter the figures to fit the music better or keep the figures the way they are and suffer poor correlation with the music.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Christmas Hornpipe

After my last experience with hornpipes, it's nice to have a contra recommended for tunes called hornpipes without having to hunt down or worry unduly about the music!  

"Christmas Hornpipe" is the name of the tune in the image below, taken from Elias Howe's Improved Edition of the Musician's Omnibus (Boston, 1861).  Click to enlarge.

Whether to call the figures "Christmas Hornpipe" is a more ambiguous question, since they appear with other tunes as well (more on this below), reused in the same way figures were in the extended Regency era, from at least 1858 through the mid-1890s.

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.

Since the book is available online (see below), I am not going to review all of Mrs. Hartley's general advice on the conduct of evening parties.  She discusses everything from the wording of invitations to the arrangement of dressing rooms to why one should take one's leave in the parlor rather than the hall.  Here, I'd like to look more narrowly at the useful tidbits of information she provides about dancing at such small and informal (by mid-nineteenth-century standards) events.  Most quotations below are drawn from "Etiquette for the Hostess" section, with those from "Etiquette for the Guest" marked as such.

The Trio

Since I frequently have to deal with an imbalance in numbers between the ladies and the gentlemen at nineteenth century balls, I'm always interested in dances that use a trio formation.  This can be one gentleman with two ladies or vice-versa, though the former is the more common situation.  

This dance, simply called "The Trio", appears in at least two editions of Elias Howe's American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (Boston, 1862 and 1866).  Howe's instructions are a bit vague and neglect to mention the actual timing of the figures, but a little experimentation convinced me that the following reconstruction is workable and fun.  This is an extremely easy dance, good for groups of beginners.  

Jackson, Otis, a Huntsman, and the Girls of Belfast

I could justify calling this dance, and by extension this post, any of the following:

• Jackson at New Orleans
• Huntsman's Hornpipe
• Girls of Belfast
• Otis's Quickstep

Obviously, I punted.

The dance in question appears attached to all these names in various mid-19th century sources.  Elias Howe was partial to the first two, which are the tunes under which the figures appeared in his Improved Edition of the Musician’s Omnibus (Boston, 1861).  They reappeared without music, again under both names, in Howe's American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (Boston 1862).  In H. G.O. Washburn's The ball-room manual of contra dances and social cotillons (Belfast, Maine, and Boston, 1863), by contrast, the same figures turned up under the name "Girls of Belfast" for the tune "Otis's Quickstep".

I feel more and more suspicious of the whole idea of naming contra dance figures in mid-nineteenth-century America.  At a minimum, one certainly has some options in naming this dance and choosing a tune, and I am coming to the conclusion that in New England in the mid-nineteenth century one could attach any figures to any suitable tune, as in earlier eras.  Howe certainly seems to have done so with abandon.

But for whatever it's worth, here are the two pieces from Howe, with the figures:

 "Otis's Quickstep" is available online at the University of Tennessee's Sheet Music Collection.  Neither I nor the library have been able to date that music very precisely, but it must be from after 1835, when the Boston Brass Band was founded, and is probably from 1864 or earlier, since that's when Baltimore publisher F. D. Benteen (better known for publishing some of Stephen Foster's works) died.  

Thoughts on teaching polka and polka redowa

I recently had the opportunity to watch another teacher do a general introduction to the standard mid-nineteenth century couple dances.  That's a rarer event than you'd imagine.  Historical dance teachers aren't that thick on the ground, and even at multi-teacher festivals, either there aren't any introductory classes or I'm busy teaching my own classes during them. 

Watching this class reminded me of something I've been meaning to write up for months about altering how we teach this repertoire.  This doesn't apply to the one-night-stand sort of teaching gig, but I think it's something other teachers with ongoing classes may find useful.

Dance in Sarah Morgan Dawson's Diary, 1862-1865

I came across a mention of Sarah Morgan Dawson's diary on an American Civil War reenactment Facebook page and took a quick flip through it for dance references before settling down on a long bus ride this week to read the whole thing.  Sarah kept her diary from early 1862 to late 1865.  A transcription was published by her son after her death under the title A Confederate Girl's Diary (1913).  The whole transcription is online at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's site Documenting the American South.  

Sarah Fowler Morgan (Sarah Morgan Dawson after her marriage), pictured at left, was a 20-year-old Louisiana citizen from a prominent family when the war began.  Her family split, with one brother and sister staying on the Union side and three other brothers fighting in the Confederate military.  Sarah and her remaining sister, Miriam, were ardent secessionists as well.  The diary tells the story of the sisters' efforts to survive in the company of their widowed mother, married sister, and sister-in-law (and her children) during the invasion and occupation of rebel Louisiana.  There is some basic background on the diary and the war in Louisiana here.

I'm not going to discuss the whole diary in-depth, but it does provide some interesting insights into the mindset and proper behavior of the southern lady during this era; period etiquette in action, as it were.  It is also just as problematic as you'd expect in perpetuating the idea of the happy "servants" (slaves).  Sarah's periodic laments about how awful it would be for the Yankees to spoil this jolly way of life can be grating.  But her ability to look past the conflict and see the various Union officers as individuals is impressive, as is the way in which, with relatives on both sides, she balanced patriotism and family feeling.

As far as dance goes, this is not Gone with the Wind.  The family frequently flees from one refuge to another, sometimes on the brink of starvation.  No one is holding any balls.  But some informal dancing does occur, and there are a few brief references to add to my store of knowledge about mid-nineteenth century American dance practice.

I've included page references below for all the excerpts; to find the originals, simply search the page number on the online transcription. 

Downfall of Paris (American contra)

The first thing to know about the tune "Downfall of Paris" is that, contrary to some references, it is not the same tune as that which goes with the song "Ça Ira".  It is rhythmically similar at the beginning -- hence the confusion -- and there's a vague thematic connection, but it's not quite the same piece of music.  Regency dancing master Thomas Wilson explained this succinctly in his Companion to the Ballroom (London, c1816):

To account for the unusual length of this tune — it was originally composed for a Quick March, in opposition & partly taken from the French National Air of Ça Ira, it has since become a favorite dance particularly with good dancers, as it requires a very long figure not easily performed by Tyros in the Art…

Note that when Wilson says a "favorite dance" he means a "favorite tune for dancing".  Good dancers apparently liked long tunes so that they could show off by setting lengthy combinations of figures to them.  And, indeed, various figure combinations were set to arrangements of it during the early nineteenth century in both England and America.  

A much longer explanation of the tune's history and association with "Ça Ira", may be found on the blog of the noted percussionist Robin Engelman, who has tracked down many musical manuscript sources and done such a thorough job explaining it all that I will simply refer you to his article, which helpfully includes a number of sound clips.

Its use as a dance tune (and that of "Ça Ira") during the Regency era might be an interesting topic, but it's not what I'm discussing today.

An 1840s Galopade Quadrille

I was looking for something new to do with galopade for my upcoming classes in Voronezh, Russia when I came across the same set of galopade quadrille figures in several different dance manuals from the 1840s.  That seemed to be a sign, and the quadrille turned out to be a fun little set.  (Edited 3/21/2015 to add: and the dancers in Voronezh liked it too!)

The quadrille instructions are quite straightforward.  There are six verses, each bracketed by the four couples performing a galopade around the set, turning at each position, and a "balance and turn" figure in which they chassez right and left and then turn partners by two hands, ending in close hold to prepare for the galopade at the beginning of the next verse. 

Ending a Grand March

In almost seven years of writing Kickery (has it really been that long?) I think I've only once said anything at all detailed about the Grand March, which was generally performed as the opening dance at American balls in the latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, though occasionally it appears later on the program.  Clearly an overview is overdue!

This isn't it.

While working recently on the ball program for a pair of Civil War-era balls to be held in Gettysburg in November, I started wondering idly how many ways there were to end a Grand March.  So I made a little list.  I won't be using most of these, alas; the Gettysburg balls are insanely crowded and thus do not lend themselves to really interesting Marches.  But I thought it might be fun to share some of the possibilities.

German Waltz (American contra dance)

This simple and attractive waltz contra dance figure appears under the name German Waltz in at least two of the mid-nineteenth-century dance manuals of Boston musician, caller, and author Elias Howe, as well as under the name Narragansett Waltz in at least one other.  I first encountered it under the German Waltz name, so that is the one I habitually use, though the association with the tune(s) "Narragansett Waltz" actually came a few years earlier and both names seem to belong belong to the tunes rather than the dance figures.  

My interest in reconstructing this dance arose from a desire for a mid-century waltz country dance that could satisfy dancers the same way the Spanish Dance does and thus occasionally replace it at balls.  I love the Spanish Dance, but after more than two decades of dancing and calling it, a little variety is pleasant!

Along with being a nice change of pace socially, the German Waltz also makes an excellent performance piece.  Most longways country dances are not particularly good performance pieces, since the nature of the longways formation means that the dancers spend a lot of time with their backs to the audience.  In the German Waltz, the dancers spend most of their time either facing up and down the set or waltzing in a circle.  This makes it a much more audience-friendly dance.

Tales of the Schottische from Godey's Lady's Book

A comment from one of my Russian correspondents that the schottische was rarely, if ever, danced in Russia in the nineteenth century* started me thinking, after a series of mental jumps**, about how well-accepted (or not) the schottische was in America in its early years. 

There appears to have been some dissension on the merits of the dance after its introduction to America around 1849.  Edmund Ferrero claimed in The art of dancing (New York, 1859) that the schottische had "acquired great favor", and all the major dance manuals from the end of the 1850s onward include it.  But the anonymous author of Beadle's dime ball-room companion and guide to dancing (New York, 1868) claimed that the schottische was considered "vulgar".  Since it appeared regularly on dance cards from at least the late 1850s all the way into the early twentieth century, that can't have been a universal opinion.  But was it really anyone's other than, presumably, those of ministers and others who condemned dancing altogether?

Two short stories from the famous nineteenth-century women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book suggest that the popularity and vulgarity were not mutually exclusive, and that there was continuing concern in some circles about "fashionable" dancing.

Sackett's Harbor

There is no way in which this mid-nineteenth century American country (contra) dance can be said to be traditional in format, either for the Civil War era or before.  That's precisely what attracted me to it: the unusual twist in the figures makes them stand out from the many others published in the mid-nineteenth century.

On the matter of names
The more contra dances of the 1850s and 1860s that I look at, the more I suspect that the interchangeability of tunes and figures of the Regency era applies just as much later in the century, eventually evolving into the modern contra practice of dance figures having names and, with a very few traditional exceptions, being done to whatever tune suits the fancy of the musicians.  In this case, these figures appear under at least four different names, which suggests to me that the names belong to the music rather than the dance figures:

Dodworth's Bolero

The Bolero, or Dodworth Schottisch, is a real oddity in mid-nineteenth century American dance.  For starters, it is neither a Bolero in the sense of the Spanish dance nor, technically, a schottische in either music or dance pattern.  It's a weird little schottische-mazurka mashup created by Allen Dodworth himself, and I can't imagine it was ever danced outside his own dance studio.  Actually, I'm not sure it was ever danced, period, since some aspects of the dance seem rather poorly thought out.  But I find it oddly intriguing and no stranger than the five-step waltz, which did catch on to some extent.  It's an interesting example of early creativity in developing new couple dances before the  mid-nineteenth century repertoire achieved some degree of standardization.

The sheet music for the Bolero, "Dodworth's New Schottisch", was published in New York in 1850.  Covers varied; along with the one pictured at left (click to enlarge), courtesy of the 19th-Century American Sheet Music collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, there is one without the fancy scrollwork border in the Library of Congress's Music for the Nation collection, and I have a copy of one other with a different border printed in red.  The printing is exactly the same in each other than the cover decoration or lack of it.

(Edited 6/12/14 to add: There is another copy with a green scrollwork border at the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection at Johns Hopkins.) 

Baden-Baden Polka

The "Baden-Baden Polka" is another polka contra dance that appears in both Elias Howe's Complete Ball-Room Hand Book (Boston, 1858) and his American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  I have no other sources for the dance, which is not unusual; my suspicion is that most of the contras in his books were Howe's own calls rather than any sort of universally accepted choreography. 

Howe seems to have been willing to put contra dance or quadrille figures to just about any piece of music. He presumably named this contra after the "Baden Baden Polka", generally attributed to Philippe Musard, though some music lists him only as the arranger, rather than the composer.

It is not a particularly unusual or challenging contra dance, but it is a good example of a "generic" American contra with very popular figures and a bit of polka attached.

CD Review: The Civil War Grand Military Ball

The Civil War Grand Military Ball dates back to 2007, but I only recently encountered it while looking for new nineteenth century dance music.  It is the fourth recording by the Tennessee-based 52nd Regimental String Band and the first to consist specifically of dance music.

The most immediately noticeable difference between this album and most of my others is that most of the tracks include vocals, which may or may not be to everyone's taste for dancing.  I have mixed feelings about it, myself.  I prefer my nineteenth-century dance music instrumental rather than vocal, but with a couple of notable exceptions (see below) I enjoyed the singing and was amused to realize that the two songs ("Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Kemo Kimo") in one medley are ones I remember singing versions of as a little girl growing up in Texas.

Howe's "Rats" Quadrille, concluded (3 of 3)

This is the third in a series of three posts discussing the "Rats" Quadrille, with this one covering the fourth and fifth figures.  See the two previous posts for introduction and background and the first three figures.

Howe's "Rats" Quadrille, continued (2 of 3)

On to the actual figures of Howe's "Rats" Quadrille!  Please see the first post in the "Rats" series for an introduction to the quadrille and links to sheet music. 

Howe's "Rats" Quadrille (1 of 3)

Les Rats Quadrilles is a set of five tunes composed by G. Redler as alternate music for the first set of French quadrilles. The tunes are unusually good, and the set became enormously popular and was reprinted for many years, not only in England but in America and Australia as well.  In 1854 a  piano-duet (four hands) version arranged by J. C. Vierec was published in Philadelphia. 

Some editions featured the "tree roots" version of the title shown at left, and others a small orchestra of rats with various instruments.  American editions seem to have credited the composer as "J. Redler", but English sources consistently give his first initial as "G".

I do not have a definitive initial date for the first publication of Les Rats, but in 1846, A. M. Hartley, in his The academic speaker, a system of elocution (Glasgow) mentions on page 319 the inclusion of "Redler's popular Rat Quadrilles" in Volume I of the collected Hamilton's Cabinet of Music, a sheet music series, which puts Les Rats into the first half of the 1840s.

Revisiting Chassé Out

Almost four years ago, I discussed the quadrille figure "chassé out", or chassé ouvert, in a post discussing the reconstruction of a mid-century quadrille.  I've revisited the figure occasionally since then, both in its Regency-era context and in its unusual mid-19th century appearances in the quadrille calls of American dancing master Elias Howe, and found enough new information to be worth a fresh post on the topic and to make me reconsider how I would reconstruct the figure both for early quadrilles of the 1810s-1820s and for the quadrille sets published by Howe in 1858 and 1862.

Lancers, Lancer's, or Lancers' ?

My old dance buddy Chris Imershein of the North Carolina group Triangle Vintage Dance writes:

Just curious if you have any historical sources for the proper "spelling" of The Lancers Quadrille(s).  Spare Parts has it as "Lancers" on the original [Civil War Ballroom] CD, but as "Lancer's" in their sheet music book.  I've also seen it as Lancers' on the web.  Any thoughts?

CD Review: Returning Heroes

Brand new this month -- the release party is coming up in a couple of weeks -- is the dance band Spare Parts' latest CD of mid-nineteenth-century dance music, Returning Heroes.  After dancing for many years to music from their earlier CD, The Civil War Ballroom, it's a delight to have new music for this era!

The short review: it's a great CD; buy it immediately if you enjoy dancing of the Civil War era.  

The longer version follows.

Disclaimer: the musicians of Spare Parts are personal friends, and my advance copy of this CD was sent to me as a gift.

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.

The Swedish Dances, Part Eight: Across the Atlantic!

(Eighth in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  The first post may be found here.)

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Swedish dances reappear in a series of American dancing manuals...with a bit of a twist. 

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”.

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.

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.

It's a polka! It's a waltz! It's a contra dance!

I was reading through Elias Howe's Complete Ball-Room Hand Book (Boston, 1858) looking for a nice waltz contra dance to write up when I realized that the one I had in mind looked oddly familiar. 

Take a look at these two figures, appearing on consecutive pages:

COLOGNE POLKA
First and second ladies join hands and polka across and back, (gentleman single on the outside at the same time), first and second gentleman join hands and polka across and back (ladies on the outside at the same time), first couple polka down the centre and back -- first two couples polka quite round each other to places.

BOHEMIAN WALTZ
First and second ladies join hands and waltz across and back, (gentleman single on the outside at the same time), first and second gentleman join hands and waltz across and back (ladies on the outside at the same time), first couple waltz down the centre and back -- first two couples waltz quite round each other to places.

Notice anything unusual?

Highland Reel (country dance figure)

    •    Era: 1840s-1890s

While researching nineteenth-century Scottish reels, I was surprised to come across a dance labeled “Highland Reel” that was not the usual sort of Highland Reel, a simple mix of setting and heying for three or four dancers, but rather two slightly different versions of a progressive longways dance for trios of one lady between two gentlemen, formed as in the illustration at left (click to enlarge), taken from Elias Howe’s American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862). 

Ironically, I have only one, very late, Scottish source for the dance; most of the sources I’ve found it in are actually American!  One version made its way all the way to Australia and is found in an 1875 manual from that country.  That version, with the dancers’ genders reversed to one gentleman between two ladies, is still extant in the modern Scottish Country Dance community, where it may be found in the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society's Book 13.

The Sultan Polka (a polka contra dance)

Here's an easy mid-nineteenth century American contra dance well-suited to a Civil War-era ball.  I haven't looked extensively, but the only sources I seem to have it in are two manuals attributed to Elias Howe: Howe's Complete Ballroom Handbook (Boston, 1858) and American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).

The dance is given as part of a list of "polka contra dances", and the instructions are identical in both:

First lady followed by first gentleman (with arms akimbo) polka down the centre and up the outside to place--first gentleman down the centre followed by first lady, up the outside to place--first couple down the centre, back and cast off--right and left.

My reconstruction:

8b    First lady polkas down center and up outside on gents' side to place, followed by first gent
8b    First gent polkas down center and up outside on ladies' side to place, followed by first lady
8b    First couple down the center, turn individually & back, cast off to second place
8b    Rights and lefts

The gentleman at least has his arms "akimbo", meaning hands on hips, palms outward.  The lady might as well, or be holding her skirt lightly with her fingertips.

Howe suggests that the dance could end with "all Polk round the Hall" -- break the sets and all couple polka until the end of the music.

The Gothic Dance

• Era: 1860s, America (New England)

The Gothic Dance seems at first glance to be an oddity among mid-century dances, appearing in only one manual that I have ever found, and unusual in format within the lengthy collection of contra dances in Elias Howe’s American Dancing Master and Ball-Room Prompter (Boston, 1862).  The dance was first reconstructed by my late mentor and friend, Patri Pugliese, whose reconstruction appears online in the companion dance notes to the CD The Civil War Ballroom.  The dance is a particularly easy one, energetic and fun for beginners and experienced dancers alike, and thus a good choice for balls with a large percentage of new dancers.