"Boston" is a tremendously fuzzy term which meant several different things to different dancing masters at different times and in different places from the late nineteenth century all the way into the 1920s. About all that is consistent among them is that they were in waltz time. Bostons-as-a-whole are an enormous topic, so rather than try to cover it all at once, I'm going to take different authors' versions individually and eventually work my way to some sort of summary of the different meanings of the term, with whatever patterns (by time or geography or both) to those meanings emerges.
I'm going to start with one of my favorite 1910s authors, Albert W. Newman, who, in his Dances of to-day (Philadelphia, 1914), published over a dozen different variations under the general term "Boston". I long ago described the Three-Step Boston and the Five-Step Boston. Now I'm planning to work through all the others. First on that list is the first one Newman described with a whole list of names: the Philadelphia Boston, also known as the Long Boston, the One-Step Waltz, the Drop Step and, in England, the Berceuse or Cradle Boston. Of all this collection, I prefer the Long Boston or One-Step Waltz, though Newman was evidently partial to Philadelphia Boston, under which name it appeared in the 1914 compendium Dance Mad, which collected variations from dancing masters all over the United States. Newman described it there as "the form of Boston most popular in Philadelphia at present."
Continue reading "The Long Boston (Newman's Boston Variations)" »
Recent Comments