Capering & Kickery

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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Respect the box step

I've been thinking a lot over the last few years about the underlying skills needed for various forms of social dance.  A critical one is the ability to shift steps between time signatures, as I discussed a couple of months ago.  And one of the best examples of that is what happened with the much-maligned "box step" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The box step doesn't get a lot of respect among historical dancers in America because it is strongly associated with modern ballroom dance studio practices.  That's unfortunate, because I'm increasingly convinced that its historical incarnation, the "new waltz" (in contrast to the older valse à trois temps with its pirouette), is extremely important to know for anyone studying American social dancing of the 1880s-1910s.  Despite this, it often gets pushed aside in favor of the older style, which is usually taught first and thus becomes the default social waltz in modern reenactment.  That's not wrong, exactly; it's not like the older waltz vanished in favor of the new. But I think that we ought to be spending a lot more time on the new waltz, because it appears to be one of the fundamental building blocks of the social dance of the entire late Victorian/Edwardian/ragtime era.

Let's look at how the box step got used historically:

Mr. Scott's Two-Step

The two-step of the 1890s and early 1900s was so simple to dance, and so aggressively condemned by many dancing masters, that it's actually fairly unusual to find a good description of it in a dance manual, though minor variations and sequences of dubious originality and debatable utility abound.  English dancing master Edward Scott, in How to dance and guide to the ball-room (London, c1902), provides a rare overview of the basic dance as performed in Edwardian England.

Steps and timing
Scott specifies that the music for the two-step should be in 6/8, and explains that it is "practically our old friend the galop performed with figures, in regulated sequences, and to a different rhythm," though Americans, he claims, apply the name two-step to "any dance founded on the chassé movement, or that in which one foot appears to be chasing the other."

The basic movement of the two-step is a simple slide-close-slide done in 6/8 time.  Scott describes it in detail:

The gentleman slides his left foot forward, his weight thrown thereon, and rests for two counts.  At the third count he brings his right toe lightly up to the heel of the left, and at the fourth count immediately slides his left foot again forward, stopping on it for the second three counts of the bar.  For the next bar he slides his right foot forward, sustaining his balance, while the left toe is brought lightly to the right heel, and the right again slid forward to rest and carry the weight for the next half bar.

The rhythm will be somewhat as if you said “right and right, left and left, etc., the and corresponding to the quick chasing step made with the toe of the opposite foot.

Scott calls this the chassé à trois pas or simply the "chassé movement".  The rhythm is typical of jig-time dances and can be charted thus:

        *     *  *          *     *  *                   
        1-&-a-2-&-a  1-&-a-2-&-a

It's generally unnecessary to break down the exact timing of each step in detail; dancers with any ear for rhythm will pick it up instinctively from the accenting of the music.

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Pasadena

The Pasadena, a would-be replacement for the two-step, appears in the 1900 reprint of New York dancing master Allen Dodworth's 1885 tome, Dancing and its relations to education and social life, but can be dated back to at least 1898.  It appears to have been created as a dancing school dance, as Dodworth's nephew, T. George Dodworth, discussed in his introduction to the new edition of his uncle's manual:

In order to bring the work up to date, I have been requested to write an introduction which will include a list of dances that have come into fashion since my uncle's book was originally published.

As a matter of fact, however, society dances have decreased, rather than increased, during this interval. When this work first appeared most of the round dances described in its pages were fashionable. But Dame Fashion is fickle, and, owing to some unaccountable change in taste, we now have only the Two Step, the Waltz, occasionally a Saratoga Lancers, and the Cotillion. In the dancing-schools the old dances are still taught, but with numerous new combinations, which are composed to improve the pupil and keep alive the interest. From these combinations we have the Tuxedo Lancers, the Amsterdam, Gavotte der Kaiserin, Minuet de la Cour (for four persons), and the Pasedena.

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.

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Bronco

Like the Rockaway, the Bronco is another dance listed under the "Miscellaneous" category in M.B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) as suitable for either jig time (6/8) or galop time (2/4). 

Please see my earlier post on the Rockaway for a discussion of jig and galop rhythms and a sample of jig music.

Original description

Leap backward from the right to left foot, 1; leap backward upon the right foot, 2; leap backward upon the left, 3; pass right to side and immediately draw left to right (à la Newport), & 4; pass right to side and draw left to right, & 5; leap forward upon the right, 6; pass left to side and draw right to left, & 7; pass left to side and draw right to left, & 8; four measures.  Repeat, commencing as at first. The second time the right foot may move backward at the sixth count, making the turn to the left.  Counterpart for lady.
        ---  Gilbert, Round Dancing, p.165

Reconstruction (8 measures of dance)
(steps for the gentleman; lady dances opposite)

1   2    leap back L, R
3&4    leap back-side-close L-R-L         (waltz-galop natural half-turn)
  &5    side-close R-L
6&7    leap forward-side-close R-L-R    (waltz-galop natural half-turn)
  &8    side-close L-R

Repeat from the beginning (4 measures).

This variation has a very similar construction as that of the Rockaway, with a pair of leaps followed by turning steps.  The "3&4&5" and "6&7&8" sections are each a waltz-galop with a second side-close added; the dancers make a complete turn every four measures.  All steps travel along the line of dance, with quarter turns before and after the first side steps, as described in my previous post on the waltz-galop.

One variation is given: the second time through, the leap on "6" may be backward, resulting in a reverse half-turn instead of a natural half-turn.  The pairs of leaps at the beginning are always done backward by the gentleman, make the dance easier for ladies wearing the elaborate bustles of the era.

I have no other English-language sources for the Bronco, but, like the Rockaway, it reappears in American expatriate dancing master [George] Washington Lopp's La Danse, published in Paris in 1903, under the category "Two Step et Three Step".  The description is a fairly close translation of Gilbert, but Lopp does not mention the variation of a reverse turn on the repeat.

Late 19th Century Jig-Time Dances: The Rockaway

I've recently been looking more closely at some of the "Miscellaneous Dances" found in the back of M. B. Gilbert's 1890 tome, Round Dancing, and noticed that quite a few of the dances there are labeled specifically as for dancing to jig time (6/8) or for either jig or galop (2/4) time.  The Rockaway is one of those given as suited for either time signature.

The earliest source I have for this dance is a New York dance manual, and it seems likely that it was named for the Rockaway Peninsula, a part of Long Island which was a popular seaside resort area in the nineteenth century.  The description in Gilbert is considerably clearer and is the basis for this reconstruction.

Tantivy: The New Hunt Dance

• Era: late 1890s-1900 England/France

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

I first noticed Tantivy in T. Leggett Byrne's Terpsichore: Her Votaries and Fashions, published in London in 1899 (but with a preface dated to Dublin in 1898) and made available online by Chris Brady here.  A second source is Saxon's Everybody's Guide to Ball-Room Dancing, written by Crompton's contemporary William Lamb and published in London circa 1898-1900 (it is listed in The English Catalogue of Books for those years, which was published in 1901).  The description of the dance in these two sources is word-for-word identical.  Finally, Tantivy was included in the massive French tome Traité de la Danse,  published in Paris in 1900 as volume II of an immense work on dance by Eugène Giraudet that went through dozens of editions in the late 19th century.  Giraudet dates the dance to October, 1896.  While Crompton was certainly known to American dance teachers (Philadelphia dance teacher and writer Albert Newman claimed in the early 1910s to have received dances directly from him), I have not so far found this particular dance in any American source.

The word tantivy is associated with hunting in England, with an implication of going full-speed or headlong, as discussed by Michael Quinion at World Wide Words, and the dance does require a certain enthusiastic commitment to perform successfully!

The Très-Chic

• Era: late 1890s-early 1900s

"The Très-Chic is a dance for couples in six-eight time, and is of very animated and lively character."

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