Capering & Kickery

The Detroit, 1886

The Detroit, published in 1886, was a very simple sequence dance which in theory uses a polka variant, though the 6/8 music feels more like a two-step.  The dance was choreographed by Herman A. Strassburg Jr. to music by John E. Fancher.  The cover of the sheet music, courtesy of the Detroit Historical Society, is shown at left (click to enlarge). 

The dance instructions were published with the sheet music as well as by M. B. Gilbert in his compilation Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and by G. W. Lopp in La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Both attributed it to Strassburg. 

The dance instructions are essentially the same in all three sources, though the internal reference to polka variant is given by Strassburg as the Rush Polka, by Gilbert as the Glide Polka, and by Lopp as the polka coquette.  According to Gilbert, and discussed here, all three are different names for the same variation.  It's possible they are regional terms.

Baby-Polka (La Badoise)

Despite the instructions for the dance being listed as the Baby Polka in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Polka Bébé in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), the first thing to know about the Baby Polka is that it is actually an older folk dance called La Badoise, for which French composer-choreographer François Paul appears to have either written new music or adapted a folk tune (as he did with Sir Roger de Coverley for his "Gigue anglaise croisée") and then credited himself with the choreography.  "Baby-Polka" thus appears to be simply the name of Paul's composition, which over the last century or so has become (or remained) strongly associated with the folk dance in France and elsewhere, though it is not the only tune attached to it.  The name Baby-Polka seems to have merged with Badoise to become the name of the dance as well.

The image at left above (click to enlarge) is from my own copy of Paul's "Baby-Polka" sheet music; it was reproduced exactly in Gilbert, as may be seen here.

The word "badoise" refers to the German region of Baden, or possibly to the spa town Baden-Baden, so it makes perfect sense that French writers attributed the dance's origin to Germany.  Eugène Giraudet, in and early edition of his Traité de la danse (c1890) simply stated "La Badoise est d'origine allemande" (The Badoise is of German origin).  G. Desrat, in his Dictionnaire de la Danse (1895), noted less definitively that it "paraît être d'origine allemande" (would appear to be of German origin), though he also noted its close analogy to a Russian children's dance, "la menace".  In the Lussan-Borel Traité de la Danse (c1900 and c1904 editions), it was given an "origine teutonne".

Lopp, in La Danse, claimed to have researched the origin of the Baby Polka, to no avail:

La polka Bébé, une des premières danses champêtres connues, nous vient de la Bohême; mais à quelle époque remonte son origine? On n'en sait rien, elle se perd dans la nuit des temps. C'est en vain que j'ai fait des recherches, nulle trace; seule une tradition que j'ai pu trouver et d'après laquelle la polka Bébé aurait été composée par une maitresse d'école qui l'aurait fait danser par ses élèves devant un haut personnage pour fêter son passage.

My loose translation:

The baby polka, one of the premier known dances of the countryside, comes to us from Bohemia; but to what era does its origin go back? We do not know, it is lost in the darkness of time. I have searched in vain, no trace; only one tradition that I was able to find, according to which the baby polka was composed by a schoolmistress who would have had it danced by her students dance for an important personage to celebrate his passage.

He settled on it being Bohemian and cited a Mademoiselle Suski, who provided Lopp with some lyrics to sing while dancing.  

I haven't tried to trace the folk dance origins of the Badoise, but its finger-wagging "scolding" element goes back at least as far as Arbeau's sixteenth-century Branle des Lavandières (Washerwomen's Branle). 

Whatever its origins, in late nineteenth century France it was primarily conceived of as a children's dance.  Desrat on the topic:

La badoise, en raison des mouvements des mains coïncidant avec ceux des pieds, ne peut être dansée que dans les matinées enfantines.

My loose translation:

The badoise, because of the coordinated movements of the hands and feet, can be danced only at children's daytime events.

Other writers' similar thoughts will be noted below.

Hornpipe Polka

Taking yet another meander through M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), here's an extremely simple polka variation from Constantine Carpenter and Charles Martel, the same Philadelphia-based pair responsible for The Latest York.  The Hornpipe Polka itself is trivial, but it was composed to a very popular piece of music to which it is extremely well-matched and of which numerous early recordings survive.  Edited 12/31/21: Interestingly, it does not seem to have impressed G. W. Lopp, who did not include it in his La Danse (Paris, 1903), which incorporated translations of almost everything in Gilbert.   G. W. Lopp leaned on the historical connection between sailors and hornpipes by listing it in La Danse (Paris, 1903) as Le Matelot Polka (Horn Pipe Polka), credited to C. Carpentier (sic), which I unaccountably missed when I first wrote this post.  "Matelot" is French for sailor.  Other than the name, Lopp's description is identical to Gilbert's.

The variation itself is quite short.  The starting position is "military" position, opened up side by side (the gentleman's right hand on the lady's waist and her left hand resting on his shoulder or upper arm) as discussed and pictured here.  "First foot" below refers to the normal starting foot -- the gentleman's left and the lady's right; second is the opposite.

Hornpipe Polka (four measures of 2/4 time)
2b   Polka forward twice, starting on first foot, then second.
(take closed hold)
1b   Galop, starting with first foot, making a half turn
1b   Polka, starting with second foot, completing the full turn
(open up side by side and restart from the beginning)

The Ruchter (Babies on our Block, Little Sally Waters, La Marsaielle)

Continuing to work my way through M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), here's one of the more unusual dances: the Ruchter!  It was also known as "Babies on our Block" and "Little Sally Waters" for reasons I will discuss below, as well as, apparently, "La Marsaielle".  The Ruchter as given in Gilbert and Lopp is a polka.  There is also a double-length mixed-time signature version, the Rutcher [sic] Waltz, which appears in the fifth edition of William De Garmo's The Dance of Society (New York, 1892) and which may be the original form of the dance.  De Garmo adds a footnote to his discussion of the Rutcher Waltz acknowledging the shorter just-plain-"Rutcher" with a slight variation in the second part.

(Edited 7/26/19 to add) I have described the Rutcher Waltz here. (end addition)

The Ruchter is unusual primarily because it's standard starting position is with the two dancers facing each other across the line of dance, both hands joined and extended somewhat outward.  Gilbert's illustration of this position is above; Lopp's is at left (click either to enlarge).  Note that the dancers need to be as far apart as is comfortable since, as depicting in Gilbert's illustration, they're about to be moving mirrored feet straight toward each other.

The New Side Step Polka

"There are some variations which may be introduced with advantage.  Of these the so-called 'Ostend Polka' and 'American' or 'Side-step Polka' are among the best."  -- Lilly Grove Frazer, Dancing (London, 1907), p. 421.

I'm not actually certain that Lady Frazer was referring to the New Side Step Polka given by M. B. Gilbert in Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and, more-or-less, in G. W. Lopp's  La Danse (Paris, 1903) as the Nouvelle Polka Dansée de Côté.  I don't see anything in this variation that warrants that level of praise; if anything, I find it slightly annoying.  But the way in which it is annoying is interesting, so I'll take a quick look at it just to be thorough.

The New Side Step Polka is attributed to J. G. Hoffman of Waverly, New York.  Working from Gilbert, the reconstruction is fairly straightforward, allowing for Gilbert's typical omissions.  The steps given below are the gentleman's; the lady dances opposite.

New Side Step Polka (8 measures of 2/4 time)
1       Point left foot to 2nd position
2       Hop on right and bring left to 3rd position raised
&1   Slide left to side and close right [with weight]
&2   Slide left to side and close right [without weight], making a half-turn

2b    Repeat all of the above starting on the right foot

4b   Polka

Giraudet's Pas de Trois

Like La Galopade, this Pas de Trois is a simple sequence dance created by French dancing master and author Eugène Giraudet.  Giraudet was a composer as well; he credits himself for both the dance and the music and on the sheet music calls himself "Auteur, compositeur, et professeur de danse." 

The Pas de Trois is particularly useful, as Giraudet notes, when there is an imbalance of ladies and gentlemen at a ball, since it is danced by sets of three.  Giraudet is not the only one to have thought of this; there are other Pas de Trois choreographies in late nineteenth-century French sources (including Giraudet's own books).  But this is the one Giraudet claims as his own.

Instructions for Giraudet's Pas de Trois appear with the original sheet music as well as in the 55th edition of Giraudet's dance manual, La danse, la tenue, le maintien, l'hygiène & l'éducation (c1900), and his 1913 Méthode moderne pour bien apprendre la danse.  A somewhat different version appears in B. G. Bottallo's Guide du bon danseur (Paris, 1912).  The dance can be dated quite precisely, since the sheet music is specific: September 20, 1894.  Interestingly, in La danse, Giraudet credits the music to "Hamel", which caused me a long delay in writing up this dance while I argued with the Bibliothèque nationale de France over whether the composer had been dead long enough for copyright to expire and for them to provide me with a copy of the sheet music.

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.

Lopp's Polka Croisée

At least two dances called Polka Croisée appear in French manuals.  One is a rather banal sequence dance that appears to have a German origin (as the Kreuz-Polka) and one is a completely separate dance by American expatriate George Washington Lopp, who spent time as a dancing master in Paris around the turn of the twentieth century.  Lopp's major survey of couple dancing, La Danse (Paris, 1903) is largely a translation of M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), which is one of two major sources for the Cross Step Polka (as previously discussed here).  But Lopp's Polka Croisée, while clearly inspired by the version that appeared in Gilbert's book, is distinctive enough to be considered a separate dance. 

The major points of difference are that while the Cross Step Polka that appeared in Gilbert, as well as in the fifth edition of William B. DeGarmo's The Dance of Society (New York, 1892), is a four-bar sequence with the lady and gentleman actually doing completely different steps in the first and third measures, with a standard glide sequence and half-turn in the second and fourth, Lopp's version is a longer, eight-bar, sequence which has the dancers matching footwork and turning only on the fourth and eighth measures.  It maintains its connection to the Glide Polka (a.k.a. Coquette), but the partners perform it in unison.

Professor Sheldon's Presidential Polka Quadrille

Professor Sheldon's Presidential Polka Quadrille was created by Washington, D. C., dancing master George T. Sheldon, who had a lengthy career as a dancing master to both children and adults and was the author of at least a couple of other quadrilles.  In May, 1898, Sheldon was discussed briefly in M. B. Gilbert's dance journal, The Director, in which it was said that he was then 72 and had been teaching for 57 years.  His most famous pupil was probably Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant.  This quadrille was said in several sources to be dedicated to her.

Professor Sheldon's Presidential Polka Quadrille seems to have first been published around 1893, possibly by H. N. Grant, and thereafter turns up in a number of midwestern dance manuals running through the early years of the new century.  It is referred to variously by its full name, by the shorter Sheldon's Presidential Polka Quadrille or Sheldon's Polka Quadrille, and, in one manual, as Williams' Presidential Polka Quadrille.  I have no idea who Williams was or why he was credited with a quadrille well documented as having been authored by Sheldon.

Like most polka quadrilles, Professor Sheldon's Presidential Polka Quadrille is primarily an excuse to polka, with just a few stray figures thrown in between polka segments.  I was drawn to it by the interesting mixer element in Figure 3 and the unusual way of performing the right and left (chaîne anglaise) around the edge of the set in each successive iteration of Figure 4.

In general, this is a straightforward reconstruction with only two real problems to resolve, which are discussed in the notes below. 

Cross Step Polka

Here's an intriguing little polka variation from late nineteenth century America: the cross step polka, which is found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and William B. DeGarmo's The Dance of Society, Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged (New York, 1892).  It's quite easy to do and is particularly interesting because the partners dance different steps at the same time while in a close ballroom hold, which is quite unusual in late-nineteenth century couple dancing.  

Some earlier examples of this kind of mismatched footwork include the slow French waltz and sauteuse described by Thomas Wilson in 1816, the old valse à trois temps, and Cellarius' valse à cinq temps of the 1840s.  But in all of those cases, the mismatched steps are the basic steps of the dance rather than a variation.  That suggests an unusual problem: how does one lead one's partner into different footwork for a variation when one is not doing the same footwork oneself?

Pretty easily, it turns out!  

American Gavotte / Polka Américaine

The American Gavotte is another of the variations published by dancing master M. B. Gilbert in his manual of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and republished by G. W. Lopp in La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It was attributed by Gilbert to James P. Brooks of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (and by Lopp to "J.-D. Brooks").  Gilbert also noted that it was adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York -- this would have been in 1886, from contemporary writeups of the event -- and published by permission of White Smith Music Publishing Co.  Lopp listed it as "Polka Américaine (American Gavotte)"

I've discussed a couple of other American "gavotte" variations before, but both of those were for the schottische.  The American Gavotte is listed as a polka, though it actually works perfectly well to schottische music and there is some confusion surround how it is notated that suggests that it might have originally been meant as a schottische; see the music note below.  It certainly has some choreographic kinship with the schottische gavottes in that it also uses the rhythm pattern "1&2&3,4" stepped as "slide, chassé, chassé, close" or "slide-close-slide-close-slide, close".  This is one measure of schottische as usually counted, but two measures of polka.  Because of the pattern of the following four beats of music, I actually prefer to break the first four up into two bars, polka style, as follows, with dancers starting on their first foot (his left, her right):

Mr. Layland's Polka Contre Danse

There are at least five different dances in the second half of the nineteenth century whose name is some variation on the generic "polka country dance".  The one I'm looking at here was published as both "Polka Contre Danse" and just "Polka Contre".  Unusually, it is attributed to a particular dancing master, Mr. Layland, who was active in London in the mid-19th century.  I've mentioned him before in the context of his mescolanzes.  That makes it very much an English dance, despite its appearance in a couple of American dance manuals.

My first English source for the Polka Contre Danse, The Victoria Danse du Monde and Quadrille Preceptor, dates to the early 1870s, but I suspect that it actually dates back to the 1850s.  It actually appears earlier in two of the manuals of Boston musician/dance caller/publisher Elias Howe, the earlier of which is from 1862.  Howe was a collector and tended to throw dances from every book he collected into his own works, so I suspect there is an earlier English source somewhere, possibly by Layland himself.  Maybe someday I'll find it.

Until then, on with Polka Contre Danse!

Dance Card: Washington, D.C., 1880 (with bonus Glide Polka!)

The beautiful dance card pictured at right (click to enlarge) went by me on ebay almost two years ago, but the seller kindly uploaded a full set of pictures, inside and out, which I carefully downloaded for future reference.  The rest of the images may be found further down this post.

The event for which the card was designed was L. G. Marini's 21st Annual Floral May Festival and Ball, held at Marini's Hall, Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 20, 1880.  The card is unused.

The dance program, alas, was quite banal, a standard late nineteenth century mix of waltzes (seven), the Lancers (four), a galop, and two polkas.  The ball was begun with an aria from Bellini, and the music given for each dance is by well-known composers such as Strauss, Weingarten, Planquette, and Weigand.  There were seven dances plus the aria before intermission and seven after.  No grand march is mentioned.

I'd held off posting this card for so long because I couldn't really think of much to say about it except that the cover illustrations were charming and that it specifically mentioned that refreshments were to be served from 10:00 to midnight, though it neglected to give the actual time of the ball.  

But there is one minor detail of note: the first polka, to a tune from Faust, is listed as "Polka (Glide)".  The other polka is just plain "Polka".  Why the difference?

There is a polka variation called the Glide Polka which appears in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and a few other sources including, oddly enough, several physical education manuals going well into the twentieth century.  

It's very rare for any specific dance variation to be mentioned on a dance card.  So while we can't be perfectly certain that the Glide Polka described in Gilbert is what was meant, even the chance that it is documenting the use of that variation makes this card notable.

So let's talk about the Glide Polka!

Kate Crosby's Polka Party

One of my ongoing projects is looking at mentions of dance in nineteenth-century books and periodicals in order to get an idea of what people other than dancing masters thought and wrote about dancing.  "Kate Crosby's Polka Party" appeared in The Anglo American, a Journal of Literature, News, Politics, the Drama, Fine Arts, Etc.,Vol. 3, No. 26, published in New York on October 19th, 1844, at the height of the first burst of polka's popularity.

Let me state first that this story does not describe an actual polka party.  This is a fictional morality tale using a hot dance trend as to draw attention.  Nonetheless, there is very interesting information within about both the polka's popularity in the fall of 1844 and the practicalities of putting on a small working-class ball, which would have to be realistic enough to be unremarkable to the journal's readers.

Thoughts on teaching polka and polka redowa

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

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

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.

La Troïka

Many people confuse the Polka russe with the Troïka.  I will say all the same that, at balls, when the Troïka is announced, almost everyone dances the Polka russe.  If the rhythm of the two dances is the same, the manner of executing them differs, in the sense that the one is danced by two people and the other by three...the word Troïka means three, which should prevent all confusion.
            -- Professor Barthélemy Bottallo, Paris, c1910-12 (my translation)

In the late 1890s and early 1910s a trio of French dancing masters included descriptions of the Troïka, a simple polka sequence for three, in their works on modern social dance.  This Parisian Troïka is not the same as the Russian folk dance of the same name, though obviously inspired by it, and the choreographic link with the Polka Russe further emphasizes the connection.  I have previously discussed the many variations of the Polka Russe found in late 19th and early 20th century dance manuals, but for those who wish to actually dance the Troïka, I will give a quick summary of that dance.

Polka Russe

The Polka russe is a dance much appreciated by good dancers; it is of great simplicity while appearing very complicated.
            -- Professor Barthélemy Bottallo, Paris, c1910-12 (my translation)

I kept tripping over descriptions of the Polka Russe in various sources while researching something else, so I finally decided to pull together all eight descriptions in a little overview.  This proved an interesting demonstration of the lack of standardization in nineteenth-century dance: while the sequences given by different authors (or sometimes by the same author) are clearly related, there are enough clear incompatibilities among the various descriptions that there is no way to determine a definitive version.

While its origins are unclear, the sources I have range from late 1880s New York to the Paris of the first decade of the 20th century, though the American and French versions differ significantly in dance position and modestly in step-sequence.

The Parisian form of the Polka Russe incorporates the earlier "heel and toe" or "Bohemian" polka, which is included in some of the descriptions under the name "polka piquée," while the two versions from New York are very similar to a two-step sequence developed by William Lamb in England in the late 1890s, Tres Chic, and Lamb's similar two-step/schottische hybrid, Tantivy, as well as the popular Washington Post (done to the Sousa tune of the same name), which has similar positioning and arm movements to the Parisian form of the Polka Russe.