Capering & Kickery

Another "Original" Gallopade

Whatever the Original Gallopade published by dancing master W. G. Wells ("late of London") in The danciad, or companion to the modern ball room (Montreal, 1832) may be, it's certainly not the "original", in the sense of being the first version, since it's clearly a variation of the Original Gallopade published in Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition) by J. S. Pollock (London, c1830).

The introductory material is also blatantly plagiarized from either Pollock or some common source, so it can hardly be called "original" in the creative sense either, and it is unlikely to be exactly what was originally introduced in 1829 and referenced in the introduction to the dance, which I will append in full at the bottom of this post.  I think that introduction is more about gallopade-as-a-dance-in-general rather than this specific gallopade.  But in any case, it's virtually identical to the introduction in Pollock, and they can't both be the original.

The one element actually original to Wells was a diagram showing the circle of couples (represented by X for gentlemen and O for ladies).  But all in all, I would say that "The Original Gallopade" should be considered a proper name rather than a description. 

That said, the dance figures themselves are an interesting variation on the Pollock dance, and I have such a small collection of figured gallopades for circles of couples that any addition is of interest.  

The Bronco

Compared to other dances found in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), the Bronco is a bit of a puzzle.  The tune "Le Bronco" was a schottische with an interestingly irregular accent which the dance matched precisely.  Both music and dance were composed by J. F. Davis, as may be seen on the cover at left, from the 1888 sheet music, which has been made available online by Richard Powers, here (PDF).  According to Powers' bibliography, there was also an earlier edition published in 1885.  

These publications obviously predate Gilbert (1890) and Lopp (1903).  But Gilbert and Lopp, who were usually quite good about crediting the creators of dances, did not attribute the Bronco to Davis.  They also gave a shorter sequence, only the first part of Davis's two-part dance, and listed it as for 6/8 (jig) or 2/4 (galop) music rather than schottische.  Why?  We don't know. 

The simplest explanation is that the shorter jig-time version was transmitted more widely and Gilbert either was unaware of the Davis version or, for some reason -- personal conflict, political difficulties between dance organizations, whatever -- just didn't want to give Davis the credit.  Lopp rarely offered a credit that Gilbert did not.  Or Gilbert might have created the shorter version himself, though in that case Lopp might likely have credited him. 

Another possibility is that there was an existing dance called the Bronco and that Davis incorporated it into a longer sequence and composed music to match.  I consider this less likely.

For now, the exact process by which we ended up with two variant Bronco sequences will have to remain a mystery.

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Three Tiny Galop Variations

Wrapping up my impromptu miniseries of posts on galop variations found in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), here's a trio of galop variations which I don't feel warrant sufficient time or analysis for individual posts:

• Two of the three are short "do something, then some galop" sequences; the other is even shorter and rather dull
• None of them are very challenging to perform, and two have repeated leaps from a complete stop, which, as a dancer, I don't really enjoy. 
• None of them have any conflicts between sources. 
• One has a reconstruction problem, but it's minor and easily resolved. 
• I fully expect that all of them have matching sheet music and that the names of the variations are actually the names of the tunes to which they were choreographed, but I haven't been able to locate any of it, and none of them are sufficiently attractive to inspire me to spend much time searching.

So, in the interest of efficiency, here's the trio together with brief notes about each.

The Gaiety (La Gaité)

This is turning into a miniseries of galop variation posts.  Moving right along, the Gaiety is another one found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  The dance was attributed to George T. Wilson by Gilbert and plain George Wilson by Lopp.  I'm familiar with books by George E. Wilson, but not George T. Wilson.  The "T" might be a typo, but I don't think it is.  George E. published rather standard manuals from New York.  The two I have looked at (one that I own, one at the New York Public Library) do not include the Gaiety, and are so pedestrian and derivative that I think it unlikely that he created something as, ah, non-pedestrian as the racket-like Gaiety.  And Gilbert listed George T. as living in Maine.  Possibly the reason they both used their middle initials was to avoid confusion!

Gilbert noted that the Gaiety was accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, on September 4th, 1889.

Allowing for translation issues, the two descriptions are almost identical in wording, and the reconstruction is mostly straightforward.  For the steps given below, the gentleman begins on the left foot and the lady on the right.  The starting position is a normal closed ballroom hold, starting either with the gentleman facing more-or-less along line of dance (if dancing diagonally, which is my preferred reconstruction) or with his back to the center if one is attempting to turn the Gaiety.  See the notes below for more about this issue.

The Puritan Waltz (La Puritan Galop)

The Puritan Waltz is not, actually, a waltz.  It's a galop variation found in both Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903).  Gilbert described it under the name The Puritan Waltz and also referenced it under The Jubilee.  Lopp chose truth in advertising over adherence to the original and went with La Puritan Galop.  The two descriptions match perfectly in the practical aspects, though Gilbert gets a little more poetic in naming the parts of the dance after...a whaling expedition?  I feel like there must be some story behind a dance with parts called "The Calm", "The Fluke", and "The Gale", but I've no idea what it might be.  Nantucket Puritans?

With a title like that, the first question that comes to mind is whether it's mis-listed or mis-described and really meant to be a waltz.  It's not; the sheet music by George Fox (cover image at left; click to enlarge) is online at the Library of Congress, complete with dance instructions that are nearly a word-for-word match with Gilbert.  It's nice to have an outside source for a Gilbert/Lopp-published dance; it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.

Per the sheet music, the dance is by E. Woodworth Masters, was published in 1885, and was accepted by the National Association of Teachers of Dancing.  Gilbert and Lopp both duly credit Masters.

Giraudet's Galopade

La Galopade is a short, simple sequence dance created by French dancing master, choreographer, and author Eugène Giraudet and preserved in the enormous 55th edition of his dance manual, La danse, la tenue, le maintien, l'hygiène & l'éducation (c1900) as well as in his 1913 Méthode moderne pour bien apprendre la danse.  A matching description appears in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903). 

In the companion volume to La danse, Traité de la danse (c1900), Giraudet dates the dance to 1889; its earliest appearance may have been on the accompanying sheet music by composer Félix Chaudoir.

The dance itself is consistent across the sources and entirely straightforward to reconstruct.  The dancers start side by side, as shown above (click to enlarge), inside hands held high, gentleman's left hand on his hip (palm out) and lady's right hand holding her gown.  They start on "outside" feet (his left, her right).  Couple follows couple around the room in a line or circle.

Because it moves against line of dance, La Galopade is best done by the room as a whole, rather than as a variation in a normal galop or polka.

La Galopade (16 measures)
2b    Polka forward, side by side
1b    Polka in place, turning half round individually to face against line of dance, changing hands
2b    Polka forward, side by side, against line of dance
1b    Polka in place, turning half round individually and coming together in normal closed hold
2b    One bar of galop and one bar of polka (= four-slide galop); half-turn

6b    Repeat galop/polka (four-slide galop) sequence three more times; one and a half turns
2b    Polka; one complete turn

Open to original position holding inside hands and restart from the beginning.

Ripple, Ripple, Jersey

The Ripple Galop and the Jersey are two galop variations found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), a French translation of Gilbert with some additions and changes.  Both variations use the late nineteenth-century American waltz-galop technique of a leap along the line of dance followed by a side step and a cut (or close of the feet) in the rhythm "1&2" rather than the slide-chassé of the galop, extending it into the "Newport" pattern of a leap along the line of dance followed by a series of side-closes, stretching the basic step-unit from one to two measures.  The key difference is where the side steps and closes fall relative to the strong beats of the music:

galop:              1 (side)                   & (close)    2 (side)
waltz-galop:    1 (back/forward)    & (side)      2 (cut/close)

The galop pattern ends in an open position.  The waltz-galop normally does as well, but it can also be ended elegantly at the end of the music by a close of the feet rather than a cut.  This alteration of the relationship of movements to music in dances of the "new waltz" family is what makes these variations interesting to me.

Please see my original posts for a little more information about the waltz-galop (here) and the Newport (here).  

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.  

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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. 

A Late Victorian Galopade Country Dance

Galopade country dances turn up most frequently in the early-mid-nineteenth-century (1830s & 1840s), but they're not unknown later on.  A "Galopede" (under a wide variety of spellings) is still found in folk and traditional dance communities in Britain and former colonies such as Australia.

I have two sources for this particular galopade, both only vagely dated: Rudolph Radestock's The Royal Ball-Room Guide (London & Otley, c1877) and The People's Ball Room Guide, edited by James Scott Skinner (Dundee & London, c1905).  Both of these books were at least in part compiled (or plagiarized) from other dance manuals.  I suspect there is an earlier common source for this galopade -- there is nothing about it that would make it inappropriate as early as the 1840s.  If anything, it's rather old-fashioned for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  I'd also call it more typical for England or Scotland than America, where galopades don't seem to have been as common or had the same staying power.

Skinner classifies this galopade as a children's dance: "To Follow the March in a Children's Ball", presumably after ending a Grand March in platoons and flipping alternate lines of dancers around to create the couple-facing couple lines shown at left in a diagram from The People's Ball Room Guide.  Radestock doesn't specify an age group, and adults certainly did galopades -- and much sillier things -- in ballrooms during the nineteenth century.  It's a nice, easy dance that would be good for a ballroom full of beginners.

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.

Galop à Trois Pas (Three-Slide Galop)

Known variously as the three-slide galop, three step galop, galop à trois pas,  or galop à trois temps, this late-nineteenth-century variation is simply the standard galop step migrated into waltz time.  I've previously discussed the galop in 2/4 time in detail; the three-slide version is the same kind of series of slides and "chasing" steps:

1b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide = 1 & 2 & 3
2b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide = 1 & 2 & 3

This could also be described as slide-chassé-chassé, with each chassé being a "close-slide".

As is standard for galop, the first half is performed leading with the first foot (gentleman's left, lady's right) with the second foot then closing behind in order to again slide with the first foot.  The second half is then performed by sliding with the second foot and closing with the first.  As with the 2/4-time galop, no hop is mentioned.

The three-slide galop is described in several major dance manuals at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century:

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: Le Rêve

Continuing to work my way through late nineteenth-century jig-time (6/8-time) dances, here's one attributed to New York dancing master C. H. Rivers (left) but found not in Rivers' own dance manual, but in the "Miscellaneous Dances" section at the back of M. B. Gilbert's 1890 tome, Round Dancing, as well as in American expatriate Washington Lopp's 1903 French translation and expansion of Gilbert, La Danse. 

"Le rêve" is French for "dream."  Gilbert leaves off the circumflex for "Le Reve", but Lopp, as would be expected for someone writing in French, includes it.  I have no information about the source of the name.  Possibly it was named after a particular piece of music, or the name might simply be a romantic fancy.  Gilbert states that dance was adopted by the American Society of professors of Dancing, New York, on September 4th, 1889, which dating explains its absence from Rivers' own work, published in Brooklyn around 1885.

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 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.

The Polish Galop

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

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

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

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

An 1830s Galop Pattern

• Era: 1830s England

This new and fashionable dance, which it appears is of Russian origin, was first introduced into this country at His Majesty's ball, St. James Palace, on the 11th June, 1829, when the Princess Esterhazy, the Earl of Clanwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, and some of the foreign ministers exerted themselves in teachings its novel movements to the company, and was danced alternately with Quadrilles and Waltzing during the whole of the evening.
     -- J.S. Pollock, Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (2nd ed), London, c1830

In an earlier post, I described the basic galop of the mid- to late 19th century as a series of slides and "chasing" steps with half-turns interspersed, commonly found in the pattern of four-slide galops, performed as follows:

2b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide-close-slide (half-turn) (count: 1 & 2 & 3 & turn)
2b    Slide-close-slide-close-slide-close-slide (half-turn) (count: 1 & 2 & 3 & turn)

All slides are performed along the line of dance.  The default turning direction is clockwise, though counter-clockwise turns are also possible.  The first set are performed with the first foot (gentleman's left, lady's right) with the second foot then closing behind in order to again slide with the first foot.  The second series is then performed by sliding with the second foot and closing with the first.  The galop sequences may also be extended to four bars per set, i.e. "eight-slide" galops. 

This description is consistent with most galop sources from the mid-century onward.  But oddly enough, that's not how it's described in the source from which the quotation above was drawn. 

The Royal Gallopade

The Royal Gallopade is an interesting mix of popular 1830s dances, with elements borrowed from country dances, galopades, and quadrilles, plus a concluding sauteuse waltz.  My only source for it is the Companion to La Terpsichore Moderne (Second Edition) by J. S. Pollock, London (see update at end of post).  It is undated, but the mix of dances and a textual reference to an 1829 event suggests the early 1830s.  Pollock claims that gallopades "appear" to be of Russian origin.  Among those he credits with their introduction is the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who was a close friend of both the Prince Regent (later George IV) and Czar Nicholas I and had traveled to the Russian court.

Pollock depicts the original gallopade as a choreographed sequence dance for a circle of couples with gallop interspersed with short dance figures and gives not only this original but gallopades in country dance and quadrille form.  Fittingly, the Royal Gallopade is given a separate section of its own between the quadrille and country dance gallopades.

My photocopy of the Pollock book is at least third-generation and extremely blurry, but as best I can make it out (I make no guarantees on the punctuation) the description of the dance sequence is as follows:

Gallopade (as described in the original Gallopade) straight forward to the top of the room the lady crossing the gent at the end of each four bars; on arriving at the top, the first couple in one set, faces the first couple of the other set; the second couples faces the second, and so on to the bottom of the dance, then each four perform the figure of Le Pantalon -- the whole of the party then face the bottom of the room, and gallopade as before -- then perform La Poule -- gallopade to the top of the room, and finish with the sauteuse round the room.

While given as a social dance, this makes a spectacular performance piece as well.

Alternating the One- and Three-Slide Rackets

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

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

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

2b   three-slide to left
2b   one-slide to right, one-slide to left
2b   three-slide to right
2b   one-slide to left, one-slide to right

The sequence may be commenced at any of the two-bar moves given above, though since one generally leads off a sequence with the left foot either the first or last pair of bars are the logical starting points.  Broken down into steps (given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite), the sequence in the order given above would be:

The Three-Slide Racket

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

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

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

The Galop Racket or One-Slide Racket

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

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

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

Introducing the racket

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

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

Unlike most other couple dances of the late nineteenth century, the racket has one very unusual characteristic: it seems not to rotate.  While not all of the authors who describe the dance say anything about rotation, those that do generally agree:

• Dodworth said of the racket that it "cannot be said to be a revolving dance -- say, rather, a dance of angles, there being no full turn...By simply changing the angle of the slide to every possible direction, the whole dance is accomplished."  

• M.B. Gilbert noted in Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) that the turn "is only sufficient to allow the three slides to follow the same direction each time."

• Both Edna Witherspoon, in The Perfect Art of Modern Dancing (London & New York, 1894) and Marguerite Wilson, in Dancing (Philadelphia, 1899, reprinted regularly through the 1920s) agreed that "No full turn is made" and "The slide is made in every possible direction during the dance."  

Dodworth and Gilbert were major dancing masters of this era and are particularly authoritative sources.  Witherspoon and Wilson both draw heavily on Dodworth.  

Other late nineteenth-century couple dances make a half-turn every measure (waltz, polka) or two (galop, polka mazurka) or have a longer pattern involving some straight-line travel followed by turning (schottische).  Gilbert recorded dozens and dozens of couple dances created by individual dancing masters in the 1870s and 1880s, and while he did not always specify turning (which was pretty much a given in this era), none of the others include language like the racket's.

Could Gilbert be interpreted as calling for regular half-turns in the same direction, which are what allow the slides in the galop to follow the same direction each time?  It seems unlikely to me; he did not need to change his phrasing for that.  He could simply have said that a half-turn is made at the end of a measure (or two, depending on the length of the particular racket variant), as he did with many other dances.  

Rather than make a half-turn at the end of each step-sequence, I think Gilbert was implying that you turn first one clockwise, then counter-clockwise, putting first the gentleman's left shoulder, then his right shoulder, toward the line of dance without making a complete rotation.  That would accord with Dodworth's clearer statement.  

This sort of twisting back and forth is easiest if the dancers move along the line of dance in a sort of zigzag pattern, using the cuts back and forth at the end of each racket pattern to change the angle of travel.  On the longer racket variants, this means a lot of travel toward the center of the room and out to the wall again, which can be quite dangerous in the high-speed galop, in particular, since other dancers will be taking fairly straight paths along the line of dance.

Except in Wilson's book, which was reprinted unchanged for a quarter-century despite growing more and more out-of-date, mentions of the racket peter out in the early twentieth century, along with most of the other new couple dances of the 1870s and 1880s.  But I did find one much later reference, though not to it as a current dance.  The racket appeared on a list of dances in Betty Lee's Dancing (first edition, 1934; my copy is dated 1942) which was supposed to represent a program that her mother would have danced at a ball.  It was listed in company with popular nineteenth-century dances: waltz, polka, schottische, Lanciers, redowa, mazurka, Varsovienne, etc.

The racket had five major variations and one unusual one that may have been dreamed up by Dodworth.  I'm going to post a short series on the galop-time rackets over the next week or two and continue on to the waltz-time rackets as I have time.  I don't think racket quite rates its own category, so I'll put links to each post here to provide a single central list.

Racket-related posts on Kickery (edited several times 2009-2015):
        Galop Racket or One-Slide Racket (galop time)
        Three-Slide Racket (galop time)
        Alternating One- and Three-Slide Rackets ("The" Racket) (galop time)

Racket Waltz or The Society (one-slide in waltz time)
Two-Slide Racket (waltz time)
Alternating One- and Three-Slide Rackets (waltz time)
    (this incorporates an unusual three-slide racket in waltz time)

Reconstructing a problematic racket description

How to Harvard

This post is for Antonia, a superb 19th-century reenactor and dancer who has just completed her freshman year at that Ivy League school up in Boston.  Congratulations from a Yalie!

• Era: 1880s-1890s (America)
• Dances: Schottische, Polka, Galop

I have a strong but unsupported suspicion that the dance variation called the Harvard is some sort of Victorian joke playing off the turn-of-the-century dance known as the Boston.  The characteristic step is a long slide forward or backward along the line of dance, similar to the step of the Boston, combined with a sequence of three measures of waltz-galop.

The Harvard was described by prominent late 19th-century dancing master M.B. Gilbert in his collection of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) as a variation for the schottische, though the timing is more that of a polka or galop.  It is attributed by Gilbert to the late Professor Vegas of New Orleans.

How to dance the galop

One of the simplest couple dances of the nineteenth century was the galop (gallop, galopade, gallopade), which traveled from the ballrooms of continental Europe to those of England and American in the 1820s and 1830s, often as part of quadrilles or country dances.  It was also -- by the middle of the century, predominantly -- a dance for individual couples, though it continued to appear in quadrille figures and occasional country dances throughout the nineteenth century.  It is described in just about every surviving French, English, and American source for couple dancing from the mid-nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth.  I have cited a few of these in the text below; a complete bibliography would run multiple pages.

The galop is an aerobic dance done at a rapid pace.  One of the few manuals to include tempo notes, M.B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) gives a tempo of 144 beats per minute for the galop, as opposed to 116 beats per minute for the polka.  La Danse (Washington Lopp; Paris, 1903) agrees with those tempos (Lopp borrowed heavily from Gilbert) and adds 120 beats per minute for the two-step.

Coulon's handbook (third edition; London, c1860) describes the lively nature of the dance in its untamed form:

The Gallopade has had a long reign of nearly twenty years, and is still in high favour at public balls in Paris, as well as at Jullien's bal masqué in London. There is no dance more exciting, or easy to learn, it requires only a good ear to mark the time of the music. The chief requisite in this dance is to keep on one's feet, for there is great danger if once you fall that you will have those who follow over you, like the Capucins de Cartes. This power once acquired, you have only to throw yourself in the volcanic tourbillon and fellow the course of the stream, which with very little attention will be easily understood.

The Gallopade has recently been re-introduced in private society, where it is not customary to race as at a masquerade. They merely make a few steps of the galop and pass into the valse à deux temps. In this way the gallopade becomes a spirited and graceful dance instead of a tremendous rush.

Waltz Step, Galop Time

• Era: 1880s-1890s (America)

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

Waltz step, Galop time

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