Capering & Kickery

True Lovers Knot

Sometime between first edition of An Analysis of Country Dancing in 1808 and the third edition in 1811, London dancing master Thomas Wilson started creating his own original country dance figures.  Not sequences of figures, which anyone could do, but actual new floor patterns:

As novelty in Dancing as in every other amusement, is the author and promoter of an enlivening vivacity...it is equally irksome for good Dancers to be always using the same Figures, as for a professed musician to be continually playing the tunes of “God Save the King,” and “Foot’s Minuet;” and from the repeated suggestions of several good Dancers, and at the particular request of a great number of the author’s Friends and Pupils; and in order to answer the purposes of novelty and variety...The author has been induced to compose and arrange a variety of New Figures...

I wouldn’t take the “particular request” part too seriously; almost every nineteenth-century dancing master who comes up with something new modestly attributes its publication to requests by his students.  I suspect Wilson himself was the one finding it “irksome” to use the same figures over and over again.

Most of Wilson’s new figures are not terribly exciting.  Overwhelmingly, they involve only the active couple making increasingly elaborate loops and circles around the other couples, leaving four dancers with nothing to do for eight or even sixteen bars.  There are only a few which I’ve found worth bothering with over the years.  The latest of these is the True Lovers Knot, shown at left (click to enlarge).  

Let me be perfectly clear: this is not a typical Regency-era country dance figure.  It is very specific to one dance teacher and his students and customers.  Wilson himself rarely used it in his published works, and I have never seen it used by any other author or publisher.

That said, it’s a really lovely figure.  So I finally decided to work out how to dance it.

A Victorian "Sir Roger de Coverley"

Several years ago I wrote up a description of a version of Sir Roger de Coverley from the early nineteenth century and talked a little about the background of the tune and the association of the dance with Charles Dickens' famous novel, A Christmas Carol.

 

Over time, Sir Roger de Coverley mutated in various ways, and I promised back then to describe some of them.  Better five years late than never, here's another version, a "modernized" English one from the mid-nineteenth century which moves along much more briskly than the earlier version, even with a fairly lengthy set.  According to Mrs. Nicholas Henderson, who seems to have been the first to publish this version, the country dance was generally in decline in the English ballroom by the early 1850s, but Sir Roger de Coverley was an exception:

 

To make amends for the fashionable dereliction and banishment of the old favourites of "Merrie Englande," it is usual to conclude the evening's festivities with one particular species of Country Dance, called "Sir Roger de Coverley."  It has of late enjoyed considerable vogue, and is patronised by her Majesty, at her own entertainments.  We give it as at present danced at the Palace, somewhat modernised and adapted to the prevailing taste.

 

Dancing to "Wakefield Hunt"

Continuing my mini-series of Regency(ish)-era figure reconstruction...

The figures that appeared with "Mutual Love" (and a couple of other tunes) are a good example of tune/figure interchangeability -- specifically, of figures being reused with multiple pieces of music.  The other half of that interchangeability is tunes being recycled for different figures.  For that, I'm going to move on to the figures that appeared with "Wakefield Hunt'.  And the other figures that appeared with "Wakefield Hunt".  Yes, two figures, both alike in dignity (but completely different otherwise), in the fair 1770s and 1780s, where we lay our scene.  Two is actually a very small number; very popular tunes didn't go out of style and might be found with a dozen or more different figures over the years.

Dancing to "Mutual Love"

I get a lot of requests to tell people what dance figures to do to a particular piece of Regency-era country dance music.  The correct answer is "any historical figures that you like", since dance figures and tunes were mix-and-match during this period rather than locked together into tune-figure pairings with specific names.  So it's rare for me to do a through dissection of any particular set of figures.

But most people nowadays don't want to (or can't) call their own figures, and even people who don't want to try for that level of historical accuracy often do want to do figures in historical rather than modern style.  So I'm going to do a little series of posts doing historical reconstructions of the figures set to various tunes, which can then be used for that tune or any other tune of suitable length. 

First up: the figures that appeared in the 1770s with the tune "Mutual Love".

And the award for lack of originality in choreography goes to...

I'm accustomed to finding duplicate dance figures in the little country dance tune books of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  That's why I've taken to calling them tune books, since calling them dance manuals implies that the dance figures themselves are new, unique, or special.  What was exciting about them was the music; the figures were repetitive and uninspired.  In the little tune books, with twelve or twenty-four tunes, I'll often notice that the same dance figures (the complete sequence given for a tune) appear with two different tunes.  In the larger books, with two hundred or more tunes, I'll find several instances of repetition without much effort, with some figures being used several times.

And sometimes I find a doozy of a tune book whose publisher repeated so many dance figures -- even by the low standards of the era -- that more than half are duplicates.  That's unusual enough to be worth talking about by way of an example of how blithely indifferent dancers of this era were to originality in their country dance choreography.  And it can serve as Exhibit A for any future discussions of the interchangeability of Regency dance tunes and figures, which many present-day dancers have trouble accepting.

Figure Four?

In a post a while back on the Regency "figure eight" and the many meanings of the term "figure" in that era, I mentioned a joking suggestion made by a guest at one of my Regency balls that a half figure eight should be called a "figure four".  Much to my astonishment, while pursuing some research on American country dance of this era, I actually found a figure four!

The figure is in an American manual published in 1808 in upstate New York, in the figure given for the tune "Flowers of Glasgow":

Flowers of Glasgow
First couple figure four with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, lead up, hands round with third couple, and right and left at top.
    -- A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances, Otsego, NY, 1808.

I had a few minutes of excitement there, but further digging suggests that rather than inventing a new dance figure or a new way of phrasing a "double figure eight" done by four dancers, or perhaps using an odd term for some sort of reel for four, the editor or typesetter seems to have simply made a mistake.

Colonial dance specialist Kate Van Winkle Keller noted in her bibliography of American dance sources that the 1808 manual "seems to be derived from almost every dance book printed in the [previous] 15 years, including some English ones."  I've observed this as well; there are a number of figures in it that go back to English manuals as far back as the 1770s.  The figure given for "Flowers of Glasgow" is one of many copied directly from an 1807 Boston manual, which is itself copied extensively from other sources:

Flowers of Glasgow
First couple four hands round with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, led up, four hands round with third couple, right and left a top.
    -- "Saltator", A Treatise on Dancing..., Boston, 1807

Since the other figures copied from Saltator are word-for-word the same, I suspect the editor or typesetter of the 1808 manual accidentally substituted "figure four" for "four hands round".  The previous figure in the 1808 manual begins with "First couple do the figure of eight round, the second", so it would be easy to mix them up visually.

Sorry, Casey!

Another Country Dance Gallopade

• Era: 1830s, England

This dance is one of a pair of country dance gallopades published in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  They have no names or specific music, just numbers.  I've previously discussed the second one; now here's the first.  It's a very straightforward reconstruction.

Here are the original instructions:

No. 1.     (4 parts) 

    The whole of the party arranged in the same way as for a country dance stand facing the top of the room, and chassez croise all with partners -- then facing your partners, all advance, retire, and back to back -- first and second couples hands across and back again -- first lady pass outside the ladies to the bottom of the dance, the first gent. at the same time going down outside of the gents. and turn partner with both hands, remaining at bottom.

Setting a higher standard

Moving on from what ought to be the rock-bottom minimal standard for anything calling itself a "Jane Austen ball", even in the modern English country dance community, let me talk a little about higher standards, and what you'd want to do if you were interested in actually approaching as close as is practical to period practice.  I've made two lists, one of what I consider to be important and one of elements that I do not consider as critical.  Some items are characteristics of the dancing itself, and some have to do with ball format, because the latter is just as important as the former in establishing a period atmosphere and breaking people out of the modern mindset.

Modern English country dance groups are unlikely to want to try most (or any!) of this, but I hope it's interesting to see how different an experience a ball would have been two hundred years ago.  Some people have the bizarre idea that by suggesting that using "dances" (in the modern sense) from Jane Austen's lifetime for something called a "Jane Austen ball", I am somehow trying to impose actual historical practices on them.  No, really, not!

For simplicity's sake, I've limited this to just things pertaining to country dancing, rather than trying to cover the entire range of possible dance forms for either Austen herself or the actual decade of the Regency.

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:

Revisiting Swing and Turn Corners

When I discussed the Regency-era figures "Swing Corners" and "Turn Corners" a few years ago, I touched briefly on an earlier source, Nicholas Dukes' A concise & easy method of learning the figuring part of country dances (London, 1752) that contained an earlier version of "Turn Corners" which used single hands (right, left, right, left) rather than two hands for the turns but had a different pattern than the Regency version of "Swing Corners".

For the sake of completeness, I need to add one more version to my little timeline. 

Another dance for Miss McLeod's

Way back in the first year of Kickery, I wrote about the mid-nineteenth-century American contra dance "Light Dragoon", which Elias Howe assigned to the popular tune "Miss [or Mrs.] McLeod's Reel".  Here's another example of a country dance for the tune, this one taken from London dancing master Rudolph Radestock's The Royal Ball-Room Guide and Etiquette of the Drawing-Room (London, c1877).  Country dancing was not a major part of the fashionable London ballroom by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, though a few traditional dances like Sir Roger de Coverley and the Triumph appear to have lingered.  Radestock's book is unusual in giving not only six specific dances, including a polka country dance and a galopade, but another fifteen "various" country dances with no tune or other name attached and with very generic figures distinguished only by the frequent use of a poussette as the final figure.  "Miss M'Leod" [sic] is one of Radestock's half-dozen specific dances.  

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.

Three Lead Round

An instruction that turns up repeatedly in late 18th and early 19th century country dance figures is some version of "the three ladies lead round the gentlemen, then the three gentlemen lead round the ladies."  I've selected this particular figure to discuss because it's one in which a straightforward-looking title omits an important performance detail and also because a closer look at its use in dance figures illustrates how country dancing evolved in subtle ways even over a relatively short period of time.  It's also a fun, lively figure that I use fairly often myself, so it's nice to examine how "mainstream" my style is for the Regency era.

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.

Revisiting the Highland Reel

• Era: 1850s, England

It is a truth that ought to be universally acknowledged that whenever I post about a dance on Kickery, I soon after turn up another source for the dance that offers a different spin on things.  In the case of the Highland Reel in its country dance figure form, that process took a few months, but I have indeed come across another source, Diprose’s ball room guide to the figures of the most fashionable dances by J. Albert Jarvis, published in London in 1857.  Looking at Jarvis does not make me change anything about my original two interpretations of the dance, but he offers an unusual enough variation of the Highland Reel that it is perhaps just as well that it has ended up in a separate post.

The Swedish Dances, Part Nine: The Carnival of Venice

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

This new and really entertaining dance, now so much in vogue in Paris, has only just been introduced in London, but has not, as yet, been very favorably received, owing most likely to the simple fact that it is new and not generally known.  It is, however, a pretty, simple, and pleasing medium between the Contra Dance and Quadrille, which we so frequently see at Balls and Assemblies, and only requires to be well known to be better appreciated.  The greatly increasing favor with which it is received in Paris is a sufficient guarantee that it will become ultimately an equally favorite dance in London Society as soon as it is better known.

I'm going to wind up my Swedish dance series with an odd little trio dance found in The Art of Dancing by Professor Bland (London, c1870).  It's not specifically listed as a Swedish dance, but the similarities are significant.  Interestingly, judging from the above, in the three-plus decades between Bland's book and the latest previous English sources, it seems that the Swedish dance genre may have fallen out of popularity and memory in England, even while enjoying a peculiar afterlife in America.  Bland certainly doesn't recognize it.

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”.

The Swedish Dances, Part Seven: After Mr. Chivers

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

While never a prominent format, the Swedish dances became enough of a success to outlast their originator.  In the second edition of his Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (London, c1830), dancing master J. S. Pollock, “Professor of Dancing, late of Paris” gives figures for many of the unusual country dance formats originating in the late 1810s and early 1820s, among them three different sets of figures for Swedish dances.  

Pollock describes the Swedish dances as being suited to either a lady between two gentlemen or a gentleman between two ladies, though his instructions are invariably for the latter configuration.  His diagram suggests a set of trios all of the same configuration.  Interestingly, Pollock explicitly states that “no change of places is to be made either at the top or bottom of the same,” meaning at the ends of the set.  This means that a right-hand dancer going down the set would become a left-hand dancer coming back up, a minor complication which Pollock was either indifferent to or regarded as a feature.

Pollock’s three dances, each thirty-two bars in length, are not given associated tune-names, only numbers, consistent with his descriptions of other types of dances.  Any tune of the proper length might be used.  My reconstructions are as follows:

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.

The Swedish Dances, Part Three: Characteristic Setting Figures

(Third in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.  Links to the full series are at the end.) 

As mentioned in my introductory post in this series, there are distinct sequences of figures involving setting for dances suited only to a majority of one gender or the other and for dances suited to either an equal number of each or a majority.  In this post I'll take a look at the characteristic setting figures for each type of dance.

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.

The Swedish Dances, Part Two: A Trio of Swedish Dances

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

To introduce some of the typical Swedish dance figures, here are a three simple thirty-two-bar figure combinations, as given by Chivers in his various manuals, which are a nice mix of standard country dance figures with ones that are particularly characteristic of Swedish dances.  For information about the specific sources of these dances, please see the introductory post in this series.

Gothic Ancestry: A Country Dance Gallopade

• Era: 1830s, England

A year or so ago I published a discussion and reconstruction of the 1862 country dance gallopade known as The Gothic Dance and mentioned that there was a very similar dance in London dancing master J. S. Pollock's c1830 manual, A Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition).  I've taught this dance at the few 1830s events I've had an opportunity to run, but have not previously published a reconstruction.

The original instructions for the dance, one of a pair of country dance gallopades with numbers but no titles, are as follows:

No. 2.     (4 parts) 

    All advance, retire, and cross over, changing places with partners -- advance, retire, and cross over back again -- first and second couples right and left -- first couple gallopade down the middle to the bottom of the dance, and remain at the bottom.

The formation is a long line of couples, gentlemen on one side (with their left side toward the top of the set, or orchestra) and ladies on the other, in two facing lines.  While not specified, I'd have the dancers take hands along those lines.  The reconstruction is fairly straightforward:

4b    All advance and retire in lines
4b    All cross over, passing right shoulders and turning to the right to form facing lines again
8b    Repeat all of the above to original places
8b    First two couples right and left
8b    First couple gallopade down the center to the end, remaining there

(repeat until all couples have gone down the dance)

The similarity to the Gothic Dance as well as to the traditional English Galopede, which this appears to be an early version of, is obvious in the advance/retire/cross over pattern and final gallopade, though the Gothic Dance is far more creative in its figures.  This dance is simple and rather sedate by comparison!

The Swedish Dances, Part One: Introduction

(First in a series of posts discussing and analyzing the Swedish dances.)

I’ve recently spent some time focusing on a trio of early sources for the unusual form of country dance known as “Swedish Dances,” which originated in the very late 1810s or early 1820s and after their early burst of popularity continued to turn up occasionally in dance manuals throughout the nineteenth century.  Their distinguishing feature is that instead of the usual long column of couples, the dancers form a column of trios with either one lady between two gentlemen, one gentleman between two ladies, or a mixture of the two.  The Swedish dances were created in the wake of the quadrille’s introduction into the London ballroom in the mid-1810s, which spurred a great deal of choreographic innovation as dancing masters adopted figures and formations from the quadrille and merged them into the old-fashioned country dances, which had become increasingly formulaic.  Along with the Swedish dances, this burst of creativity resulted in, most notably, the Spanish dances, Mescolanzes, and Circassian circles. 

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.

Go Figure!

At our recent Regency Assembly, one of the dancers challenged my call of a "half figure eight" in a country dance, asking why it wasn't called a "figure four".  Casey, being an experienced dancer, knew exactly why, but he has excellent comic timing, and the comment broke up the room for a moment.

A geekier question would be why I was using the term "half figure eight" rather than the more typical plain "half figure".  That was for added clarity for modern dancers, who may not be as familiar with the nuances of Regency terminology, in which a sentence like "The figure of the dance is a double figure made up of five figures, the first being the figure" makes perfect sense.  Since it doesn't for everyone, let's figure out all those different usages of "figure"!

Although every Country Dance is composed of a number of individual Figures, which may consist of "set and change sides," "whole Figure at top," "lead down the middle, up again," "allemande," "lead through the bottom," "right and left at top," &c. yet the whole movement united is called the Figure of the Dance.
    -- Thomas Wilson, in The Complete System of English Country Dancing, London, c1815.

Fixing Fandango

There's a popular dance in the modern English country dance community which I often cite as a dance that has a Regency "feel" to it, albeit with some quibbles about the details.  That doesn't make it a Regency-era dance (it's decades too early), but it's an earlier version of the same style popular in the Regency and uses some figures that remained popular into the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  That makes it a reasonable dance to use for a Regency/Jane Austen event in the absence of dancers and/or a caller who can handle dancing in actual period style.  But it doesn't make the modern dance a good historical reconstruction even for its own era (leaving aside how close that is or isn't to the Regency era) without some major fixing up.

Swing Corners vs. Turn Corners

Two figures that turn up frequently at the end of country dances in the Regency era are "Swing Corners" and "Turn Corners".  The two are not interchangeable; in the early nineteenth century, "swing" meant to turn by one hand and "turn" meant to turn by two hands.  That's not the only difference between the figures, however.

What did Regency-era dancers dance?

I combine the two as a category because people who are interested in the one are often interested in the other, but what was danced by Jane Austen (1775-1817) and what was danced during the English Regency era (1811-1820) are actually questions with slightly different answers.  Austen's dancing days were more of the late 18th century, and the Regency era was a time of rapid change in social dance, mostly emanating from Paris and London.  Austen would have missed out on much of this by being country gentry and by her death just as things were starting to get really interesting dancewise.

Having addressed dance in Jane Austen's lifetime in my previous post, which I recommend reading first for background, let me now talk a little bit about the 1810s.  What did they dance during the Regency era?  Around 1810, people probably weren't doing much that was different from the previous two or three decades: country dances and reels, with a cotillion perhaps still making an appearance now and then, and occasionally an oddity like the Boulanger, Sir Roger de Coverley, or (in Scotland) the Bumpkin.  But change was coming.  The upper classes and the residents of London would soon find themselves with a much wider set of options.

What Did Jane Austen Dance?

Since early 19th century ("Regency") dance is one of my particular specialties, I get many questions that boil down to either "what did Jane Austen dance?" or "did Jane Austen dance _____?"  So let's see what I can do for a general answer. 

I can divide things loosely into three categories: what we know she danced, what she might have danced, and what she didn't dance.

A Regency "Sir Roger de Coverley"

In honor of the season...

In his Complete System of English Country Dancing, published circa 1815, Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson proclaimed of the dance "Sir Roger De Coverley" that it was

composed expressly for a finishing Country Dance, about 100 years ago, and derived its name from Addison's Sir Roger De Coverley; so frequently mentioned by him in his popular Essays in the Spectator, and is the only whole Dance given in this System. The Figures of which it is composed being permanent and unalterable, and thereby differing in its construction from all other Country Dances.

and explained its use as the final dance of the evening (or early morning, given the length of balls of the era):

At all Balls properly regulated, this Dance should be the finishing one, as it is calculated from the sociality of its construction, to promote the good humour of the company, and causing them to separate in evincing a pleasing satisfaction with each other.

Light Dragoon

• Era: 1850s-1860s America

"Light Dragoon" is an easy mid-19th century American country (contra) dance, one of a lengthy list of contra/country dances given in two manuals written by Elias Howe.  In one of the two, it is cryptically labeled "Pinkerton;" possibly this is the name of the choreographer of the dance.  It is performed in a longways set of any length, though four to six couples is easiest.  All couples are "proper," with the men standing to the left of their partners when all are facing the top of the room.

The Regency-Era Pas de Basque

In his 1818 dance manual, The Quadrille and Cotillion Panorama, Thomas Wilson provides a list of the ten essential steps for quadrilles (image at left from the second edition, 1822).  The last of these is the "PAS DE BASQUÉ."  Almack's orchestra leader James Paine (or his ghostwriter), in Paine of Almack's Quadrilles, Set I (n.d., probably late 1810s), agrees that:

"Every Lady and Gentleman desirous of Dancing Quadrilles should be Acquainted with the following Steps, which are but few in Quantity and Extremely facile in their performance."

Last on the list given is "Pas des Basques et Emboité en àrriere." 

"A very old established Figure" -- Reconstructing "Lead outsides"

In the comment thread on an earlier Kickery post, How Do You Cast Off?, Ukrainian reader Oleksiy asked whether I reconstructed the country dance figure, "lead outsides."  I haven't used this figure in my own teaching because I've been hesitant to establish a definitive reconstruction in the absence of definitive source material.  But I've since revisited the figure and more thoroughly reviewed my sources and am now ready to offer a reconstruction which I consider to be fairly solid.

Holly Berry

• Era: late 1850s onward

“Mrs. Henderson has introduced this dance in compliance with the request of pupils and friends, who were at a loss for a cheerful country dance in which all might join without previous instruction in the fashionable dances.”

Holly Berry is a short set dance apparently composed by London dance teacher Mrs. Nicholas Henderson in the 1850s.  Its first known appearance is in the second edition of her Etiquette for Dancing, published in the 1850s.  The dance was also included in Elias Howe's American dancing master and ball-room prompter, published in Boston in 1862, which appears on the Library of Congress website here.  Howe's manual, unusually, includes a specific credit to Mrs. Henderson.

The dance is reminiscent of the galopade country dances of the 1830s and was perhaps seen as too old-fashioned in style by the mid-19th century.  It does not appear to have been commonly reprinted and probably was not wildly popular.  But it makes an interesting change of pace in a Victorian or American Civil War-era reenactment ballroom.

Pop Goes the Weasel

• Era: 1850s through early 1900s, England and America

No, it isn't just a children's rhyme!  The tune is older, but in the mid-nineteenth century a rather silly dance began appearing both on sheet music and in dance manuals.  It seems to have been hugely popular, which reminds me that (1) dancing was a pastime for young adults and (2) most nineteenth-century punch recipes involved significant amounts of alcohol.

Rustic Reel

• Era: mid-19th century America

The Rustic Reel is a simple contra dance found in mid-19th century American manuals, primarily during the Civil War era of the1860s, though it appears as early as 1841 and as late as the 1880s.  Some sources note that it is particularly well suited to being the last dance in an evening:

...this dance is continued until the master of the ceremonies thinks it has been gone equally through, and generally finishes the evening's festivity, and ought not to be used at any other time.
        --- The ball-room instructer [sic], 1841.

Note that the lines of three make it awkward to put on a dance card, since each dancer needs two partners.

Any lively twenty-four bar piece of music can be used; one source specifies 6/8 time, while another suggests a Scotch reel tune.  The dance is formed by lines of three (a gentleman between two ladies) facing three down the room or in a circle, as in the diagram below.  All dancers commence at the same time.

How Do You Cast Off?

Trick question, right?  Everyone who does any form of country dancing knows how to cast off.  But if it were that simple, I wouldn't be writing about it.  Not only did country dances as a whole evolve over time, individual figures also underwent some changes.

Country Dances, Two by Two

In the comments to a previous post of mine on the realities of Austen-era country dancing, alison[sic] asked about a scene in Pride and Prejudice:

...when describing the ball to Mr Bennet, Mrs Bennet refers to the dances by what I assumed were the time signatures: "Then the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifths with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger---"  Or does this indicate some sort of dance configuration?

The short answer is that this is the way dances were organized at that time: with each partner, you would perform two dances in series before taking a rest and changing partners.  Thomas Wilson, a noted dancing master (and prolific author) in London during the first quarter of the 19th century, wrote that:

"When the Ball commences, the company should not leave their places, or rest, till after the second Dance.  Should the sets be short, they may Dance three Dances before they rest." 
-- A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816

Real Regency Dancers Don't Turn Single: Ten Tips for Judging Authenticity

As a specialist in early 19th century dance, I regularly get asked what I think of the dancing in the various films of Jane Austen's novels and how to tell if the dancing in the films or being taught by someone or other is authentic to the Regency era (1810-1820).  Sadly, the answer is usually "no."  Here's a little checklist you can use to judge for yourself, either when watching a film or listening to someone teach "just like it was in the Regency" or "the same way Jane Austen danced":

How Many Times Do We Play That Tune?

One of those questions I get asked all the time by musicians and others is "how many times through the tune for this dance?"  The reference is to progressive longways country dances, which were the dominant social dance form in Europe and America from the mid-17th century through the early 19th century and are still enjoying widespread popularity in various living tradition and revival forms.

Modern English country dance and contra practice is for all couples to start the dance simultaneously, and the modern answer to the repeats question would be as many times as needed for everyone to enjoy the dance and fewer times than it would take for people to get bored.  Modern Scottish (RSCDS) practice differs in that their dances are generally performed in short sets and have a fixed number of repeats.  But if you truly wish to perform country dances in the historical style, it's a bit more complex!