Capering & Kickery

The National Park Quadrille (3 of 3)

(See the first and second posts in this series for the structure of the quadrille, the "chorus" figure, and the introductions to each figure.)

Completing the National Park Quadrille, here are the third and fourth figures!

Figure 3     (4b intro, A=8b, B=8b; played 4b + AABBx4)
4b    Introduction (not repeated): gentlemen step to the center and turns to face partners, all quickly bow/courtesy, and the gentlemen return to places

4b    Head trios forward and back
4b    Head trios turn opposites by two hands
4b    All twelve join hands, forward and back
4b    All twelve take hands three in trios and circle round to places
16b  "Chorus" figure (described in detail here)

Repeat three more times (heads, sides, sides).

The National Park Quadrille (2 of 3)

(See the previous post in this series for the structure of the quadrille and the "chorus" figure.)

Going on with the actual figures of the National Park Quadrille!

Note that the first figure does not open with eight bars for the standard honors to partners and corners or opposites.  There is a specific kind of honors for the four-bar introduction to each figure.

Figure 1     (4b intro, A=8b, B=16b; played 4b + AABx4)
4b    Introduction (not repeated): gentlemen step to the center and turns to face partners, all quickly bow/courtesy, and the gentlemen return to places

4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies turn by the right hand (polka steps)
4b    Head gentlemen with left-hand ladies turn by the left hand (polka steps)
4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies promenade halfway round
4b    Head gentlemen with right-hand ladies right and left (chaîne anglaise) to places
16b  "Chorus" figure (described in detail here)

At the end of the figure the two ladies in each trio will have exchanged places.  Head couples repeat, then side couples twice more.

The National Park Quadrille (1 of 3)

The sheet music for Clifford G. Sweet's National Park Quadrille, published in 1892, immediately intrigued me because the cover (shown at left, click to enlarge) proclaimed it "For 8 Ladies & 4 Gentlemen".  In other words, it was a trio quadrille, for four trios in a square, which is one of my favorite variant quadrille formations.  The sheet music was not accompanied by dance figures, but, happily, they are available elsewhere, though not in their original publication.  Two near-identical versions of the instructions may be found in The American Prompter and Guide to Etiquette by E. H. Kopp (Cincinnati-New York-Chicago, 1896) and a late edition of Clendenen's [Fashionable] Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette (Chicago, 1899).  Given how close the language is in the two sources, I suspect that both authors were copying from the missing original.

The National Park Quadrille is a four-figure set performed with either polka steps or plain steps ("according to the ability of the dancers") for most of the figures, with a generous amount of polka for couples thrown in during the "chorus" that ends each figure, during which the glide polka, discussed here, should be used.  This is essentially a combination of two slides of galop (one measure) plus a polka step (one measure).  If dancing the polka in the casual slide-together-slide style, which I suspect was typical at this time, it will feel much like a four-slide galop (as described here).

The most interesting element of this quadrille is the back-and-forth progression for the ladies: on each iteration of the quadrille, they change places within their trio, from left side of the gentleman to right and vice-versa.  Since the ladies on the left and right of each trio perform different figures, this prevents any imbalance in the dancing.  Each of the four figures should be performed four times, twice for the head couples and twice for the side couples.  It is noted that if this feels too long, the first three figures can be done only twice (once for heads and once for sides), but that produces a slightly strange result, with the ladies in different positions in each figure and one lady getting more polka-round opportunities than the other.

Chivers' Troidrilles (2 of 2)

Continuing on with figures two and three of Chivers' Troidrilles...

Figure Two (Tune: Eté) 8b + 24bx4
8b    Introduction (not repeated)
2b    First head trio forward (en avant) and stop
2b    Opposite trio forward (en avant) and stop
4b    All retire to places, turning round to the right twice
8b    Four head ladies right hands across (moulinet) and left hands back
8b    Set (pas de basque) in trios (4b) and hands three round (4b)
Repeat three more times, other couples leading in turn

This is another straightforward reconstruction.  The figure is done four times as in standard quadrille practice: twice by the head couples (first couple leading, then opposite couple leading) then twice by the side couples, led first by the couple to the right of the first head couple.  

Steps
For the en avant, normally an opportunity for fancier steps, I would use a single chassé, jeté-assemblé because with three dancers holding hands, it's once again too awkward to have everyone dancing different steps.  For the retire to places, three chassé, jeté-assemblé.  The same each way for the moulinet and the final hands three round in trios.

Chivers' Troidrilles (1 of 2)

I adore dances that are for trios rather than couples.  There are so many interesting things one can do when there are three dancers in the mix rather than just two!  And, of course, it helps the address the problem that historical dance tends to be imbalanced in gender, with many more women than men interested, but many of them desiring to dance in historical gender roles...though those were not always as rigid as people believe.  Figures for one gentleman and two ladies go some way toward addressing this at balls.

I've written previously about G. M. S. Chivers' "Swedish" dances, trio country dances that were not actually Swedish, and the Scottish Sixdrilles, a reworking of the French quadrille to be danced by four trios rather than four couples.  The Troidrilles are more in the spirit of the latter (though the name is more harmonious): a miniature "quadrille" of only three figures for four trios published in Chivers' The Dancing Master in Miniature (London, 1825).  The figures are original, though very Chivers in style.

The Troidrilles were published as set to tunes -- presumably the English ones -- for the French quadrille: Pantalon, Eté, and Finale.  I believe that implies that there was no specific sheet music published for them.  Any quadrille set with a Finale figure of the same length (not always the case!) should work.  I generally teach and dance them using the recording of Paine's 12th Set of Quadrilles found on the album Music for Quadrilles by Kevin Smith and Green Ginger, with the Finale figure edited to remove the coda.

The formation, as noted, is a square of twelve dancers, each trio consisting of one gentleman between two ladies.  The head trios are the trio with their back to the music and the trio facing them.  The side trios are, obviously, the other two trios.  The figures were originally printed entirely in English; I've added French translations here and there for those who learned the figures in that language.  General familiarity with quadrille figures and steps is assumed; I will not explain either in detail.

I'll go through the figures one by one with notes on reconstruction or performance as required.

The Nahant Quadrilles (4 of 4)

The final post in my series on The Nahant Quadrilles: figure five and some thoughts on the quadrille as a whole!

The original wording:

1^st two cross over give right hand.  And back give left hand.  Form a line.  Balancez.  Half Promenade.  Forward 4.  Half right & left to places

This one should look familiar to anyone who has danced the French quadrille: it's a slightly shortened version of the third figure, La Poule.  This makes it quite easy to reconstruct, but it does present a problem with the music.  The shortened figure is twenty-four bars, while the music has four strains with no indications of any repeat structure.  Conveniently, however, the fourth strain is a transposed and elaborated version of the A strain, so for a twenty-four bar figure one could play A + BCA'x4 or perhaps save the A' strain for the last time through and play A + BCAx3 + BCA'.  The Spare Parts recording ignores the A' strain and just plays A + BCAx4, which works fine for dancing my reconstruction.

This figure really needs no further commentary; it's La Poule minus eight bars done by the lead pair alone, and the reconstruction is completely straightforward:

The Nahant Quadrilles (3 of 4)

And now we come to figure four, the biggest mess in the entire quadrille!  Problems with the figures, problems with the music, problems correlating the two...I believe in my conclusions, but I can't deny that there's a lot of guesswork involved in any reconstruction of this figure.

First, the music.  Take a look at Figure 4's tune, "Georgette", here.  There are three eight bar strains marked with a Da Capo al segno, to which my first response was, what segno?  There is no segno!  There's a Fine, oddly located at the end of the B strain, so presumably it was meant to be Da Capo al Fine.  But quadrille music usually ends on the A strain, and while the length of the figure is the next problem to consider, it's difficult to come up with a reasonable repeat structure that has AB at the end.  In thirty-two bars, A + BCAB repeated, perhaps, but in twenty-four bars, it's just impossible. 

The solution Spare Parts used on the recording was to simply decide the Fine was wrongly placed and should be at the end of the A strain.  Matching Patri's thirty-two bar reconstruction, they played it A + BBCAx4.  While it's hazardous to go purely by instinct, I believe that the A strain feels like it ought to be the ending strain.  You can listen for yourself here, where the audio clip plays A + BBCA BBCA B(fading out).  So I agree with the choice to end on the A strain. 

I am much less certain about the figure length and the four repeats, however.

The Nahant Quadrilles (2 of 4)

Onward we go, with figures two and three of The Nahant Quadrilles!

For figure two, the music (available here) has two strains with a Da Capo, which works without any tweaking.  The Spare Parts recording matches my reconstruction.

The original language for the figures:

Four ladies grand chain.  Forward & back 1^st two.  Back to back.  Repeat 4 times. 

This is a very short figure, only sixteen bars.  The second half is very straightforward: the first pair (first lady and opposite gentleman) go forward and back then perform a dos-à-dos.  As in the first figure, each time through this is a different pair.  

The first half, however, presents an interesting choice.

The Nahant Quadrilles (1 of 4)

At left is the cover of The Nahant Quadrilles, published in Philadelphia in 1836 but named after the resort town of Nahant, located on a peninsula near Boston and seen in the background of the cover image.  For many years, Nahant has been the home of a summer 1860s ball hosted by Nahant resident and Vintage Victorian proprietor Katy Bishop and her late husband Ben.  The Nahant Quadrilles were first worked on for these balls by the Bishops and my own late mentor, Patri Pugliese, in a style befitting the 1860s milieu in which they were used.  Patri was a stickler in his approach to dance reconstruction and dubbed his version a "choreography" because of the degree of adaptation.

I've long had my own reconstruction of this set tucked away, and since the Nahant ball (lately expanded to a full weekend) is canceled due to Covid, this seems an opportune moment to publish it and compare the different approaches.

The original sheet music by John H[ill] Hewitt for The Nahant Quadrilles, with the dance calls, may be found online at the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection of Johns Hopkins University.  The five tunes were named after women, with the first, "Rebecca", presumably for the cover dedicatee, Miss Rebecca Willson.  It has been recorded by the dance band Spare Parts in a version matching Patri's choreography on their album Dancing by the Shore, which may be purchased here.  That is a bit problematic for my reconstruction, which I will discuss as I work through the figures. 

Chivers' Second Set of Caledonians (1 of 2)

In the mid-1820s, London dancing master G. M. S. Chivers published two additional sets of "Caledonians" figures, over and above his first set of Caledonians, which became the standard nineteenth-century version.  The second set has some appealing variations in the figures: alternating half-figures for head and side couples; solos for both gentlemen and ladies in separate figures; a "meanwhile" figure to occupy the less-active couples; and a demi-grande-chaîne figure broken into quarters by extra full turns.  There's nothing too exotic, but it's a fun little set, fairly straightforward to reconstruct and easy to dance for anyone with general experience with Regency-era quadrille steps and figures.  I'll include the first couple of figures below and follow up with the remainder in a second post.

A note about music: my only source for Chivers' Second Set of Caledonians is his Dancing Master in Miniature (c1825), which gave figures only, no music.  I have not, so far, found the specifically published sheet music for them.  Given the degree to which sets of quadrille figures were recycled for different sets of tunes during the nineteenth century, I would not feel at all uncomfortable about dancing them to more-or-less random sets of Scottish music, either from another published set of Scottish-themed quadrilles or assembled from period Scottish tunes.  The length and repeat structure of the figures matches the standard "first set" of quadrilles.

On to the figures!

Professor Asher's Polacca Quadrille, Figure 1

Late nineteenth-century American dance manuals are littered with Polacca quadrilles, comprising at least three distinct sets of figures plus variations.  For this series of posts, I'm going to focus on the set of figures advertised as taught by Professor Asher of Philadelphia.  I have at least six sources for this set of figures, none of which are completely consistent with each other, which makes it difficult to come up with an absolutely definitive reconstruction.  

The music for this Polacca set was composed by William Coleman and published as early as 1857, when it appeared in Shuster's flute music, published in Philadelphia, which is online here.  That is considerably earlier than any evidence I have for Asher's figures; the earliest source I have for any version of them is dated 1870.  A Polacca appeared on dance cards from Professor Asher's academy in late 1878 and early 1879.  It seems likely that the figures danced were Asher's own, but the first definitive source I have for them is a Boston reprint of Coleman's music, dated 1881, on which the figures actually appear with a credit to Asher.  I've treated this as my primary source for the figures.  A detail from the cover of this music is above at left; click to enlarge.

Coleman's music was also printed in J. W. Pepper's Universal Dancing Master (1882), appearing on pages 60-62.  Asher's figures, more or less, appeared separately on page 13.  Variant versions of the figures also appeared in The amateur's vademecum by E. B. Reilly (Philadelphia, 1870), A treatise on the elements of dancing by the anonymous T. Erp. Sichore (San Francisco, 1891), The American prompter and guide to etiquette by E. H. Kopp (Cincinnati, 1896), and A complete practical guide to modern society dancing by Albert W. Newman (Philadelphia, 1903).  Given the date of the Reilly manual, I think it possible that this variant is actually a separate version of the figures, existing in parallel with Asher's, but it's similar enough that I can't be quite certain.

Musically, "alla polacca" means in the manner of a polonaise, but the music is more waltz than polonaise.  The 1881 printing is labeled "Glide, or Polacca Quadrilles", referring to a glide waltz, and the T. Erp. Sichore source called it "The Polacca or Glide Waltz Quadrille".  Reilly (1870) declared that it was danced with "plain waltz step" although he stated that it required mazurka steps in two of the figures.  I don't recommend actual polonaise steps for the walked part of Asher's Polacca, just small walking steps counted in threes, and, despite Reilly's comment, do not suggest mazurka steps.

Lawn Tennis Quadrille (3 of 3)

Winding up my Lawn Tennis Quadrille mini-series (see here for the introduction and first figure and here for figures two and three), here are the final two figures.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Figure Four: The Double Pastourelle
Music: A=8b, B=40b, played A+ (BA x4)

8b   Introduction (not repeated)

4b   Six (along top/bottom of set) forward and back
4b   Two raise arms and side lady (on left) passes under; ladies cross to side gentlemen
4b   Six (along sides of set) forward and back
4b   Two raise arms and side lady (on left)  passes under; ladies cross to head gentlemen
4b   Six (along top/bottom of set) forward and back
4b  Two raise arms and side lady (on left)  passes under; ladies cross to side gentlemen
4b   Six (along sides of set) forward and back
4b  Two raise arms and side lady (on left) passes under; ladies return to original places
4b   All four ladies forward and back
4b   All four gentlemen forward and back
8b   All forward and back to partners and turn by two hands

Repeat all of the above as written once more.
Repeat all of the above twice more with side couples leading.

Lawn Tennis Quadrille (2 of 3)

Continuing my short series on Lawn Tennis (see here for the introduction and first figure), here are figure two and the very exciting figure three!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Figure Two: The Varied Chains
Music: A=8b, B=16b, played A+ (BA x4)

8b   Introduction (not repeated)

8b    Head couples turn to right diagonal, sides to left; right and left (chaîne anglaise)
4b   With same couples, half ladies' chain
(Pairs are now: 1st lady/3rd gent, 2nd lady/4th gent, 3rd lady/1st gent, 4th lady/2nd gent)
4b   All turn new partners
8b   All balance to corners and turn corners

8b    Head couples turn to left diagonal, sides to right; right and left (chaîne anglaise)
4b   With same couples, half ladies' chain
(Ladies are now opposite their original places)
4b   All turn new partners
8b   All forward and back at corners and turn corners

Repeat all of the above to bring ladies back to original places.

Lawn Tennis Quadrille (1 of 3)

This is the week of the U. S. Open, one of the four major tennis tournaments, so it's a perfect time for Lawn Tennis!

The Lawn Tennis Quadrille, usually referred to just as "Lawn Tennis", was published in 1881 as sheet music by George W. Allen with figures "composed by the society of Professors of Dancing, New York".  This raises the frightening specter of a quadrille composed by committee, which is unusual but not unprecedented in the nineteenth century. 

New York dancing master and author William De Garmo, in the third edition of The Dance of Society (reprinted exactly in the fourth and fifth editions) added some detail, noting that Lawn Tennis was introduced on January 2, 1881, and attributing it specifically to Lawrence De Garmo Brookes, it merely having been "accepted" by The American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York.  The cover image at left (click to enlarge), from a copy online at IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana at Indiana University, shows a nice mixed doubles set with a trio of spectators, the ladies in lovely "natural form" gowns.  Only one of them is actually watching the game.

Lawn Tennis pops up in a number of American dance manuals and call books during the 1880s, but it's difficult to say how popular it was with the general public.  Dancing masters would certainly have tried to push it with their students; it was advertised, for example, on the list of dances taught for the 1882-1883 season by A. J. Webster in Wilmington, Delaware (Daily Gazette, September 16, 1882).  It turns up now and then in newspaper coverage of balls -- for example, on a list of dances from a children's recital in St. Paul Minnesota in 1883 (covered in the Daily Globe).  There was enough general awareness of its existence for it to have appeared on a sort of hypothetical program from 1888 that was never actually danced (more about this program here) and in a rather gooey romantic tale in 1886, "Love to Rescue", that appeared in The Butler [Missouri] Weekly Times on March 10, 1886:

He was a fine fellow, and Betty knew it.  He had never looked nobler than he did at that moment; but De Vaux was a gentleman with invisible means of support; his hands were white, and he could dance the lawn tennis quadrilles beautifully.

Elite Lanciers (3 of 3)

Wrapping up Gilbert's Elite Lanciers, here are the fourth and fifth figures.  Introductory material and the first figure may be found in my first post in this series; the second and third figures are in the second.

The fourth figure as given in Link:

8b   Introduction [not repeated]
4b   All swing corners with right hand half round address
4b   All turn and swing with left hand half round, address
4b   All join hands, forward & back, address
8b   Four ladies cross right hand, half round, left hand back
Played 4 times
3rd & 4th time gents

This is another figure where Link's brevity completely obscures the interesting part: that this is a mixer figure, in which the dancers change positions and partners every time until they regain their home positions after the fourth time through!

Elite Lanciers (2 of 3)

Continuing along with Gilbert's Elite Lanciers, here are figures two and three!  An introduction and the first figure may be found in my previous post.

The second figure as given in Link:

8b   Introduction [not repeated]
4b   Head ladies forward & back
4b   Cross over
4b   Head couples chassa to the left & right
4b   Head ladies pass to the couples on their left and swing gent with the right hand half round
4b   Chassa
4b   Turn partner to place
Played 4 times
3rd & 4th time gents

The interesting element that is not obvious from these instructions is which dancers do the second "chassa".  Following Rivers, it's meant to be done by six dancers in two trios in "wavy" formation, with the gentleman facing two ladies, holding hands, and all three moving in the same direction.

Eiite Lanciers (1 of 3)

The Elite Lanciers is a variant Lancers set created by M. B. Gilbert, most famous for his couple dance collection, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  The Elite Lanciers does not appear in Round Dancing.  I came across it first in the Unique Dancing Call Book by Charles Link (Rochester, NY, c1893), where it did not impress me as particularly interesting.  What changed my mind about these figures was finding a second source: New Dances, by C. H. Rivers (Brooklyn, c1890), with an attribution to Gilbert.  Link trimmed the calls in his book to a bare minimum (and didn't mention the creators of the figures).  Rivers not only offered more detailed calls but also added some additional notes and gave Gilbert his credit.  Along with being a fun set of figures, this makes the Elite Lanciers an interesting example of how a minimalist set of calls can make what's actually quite a nice set of figures into something that looks too boring to bother with. 

Les Cinq Parties du Monde

When I watched a performance of an unfamiliar quadrille back in December, I was informed that it was called Les Cinq Parties du Monde and was from 1876.  Both pieces of information turned out to be...not entirely accurate.  And I was far from the only person fascinated by the unusual figures; at least two French researchers and one Russian have taken a crack at them as well.  As a result, this is an interesting opportunity to compare different people's work and demonstrate why I disagree with some of their decisions.

But first, the basics: the figures were indeed published with the quadrille music "Les Cinq Parties du Monde" in 1876.  They are credited to Henri Cellarius "neveu", the illegitimate nephew of the more famous Cellarius.  The music is by Emile Kohler.  The sheet music cover may be seen above (click to enlarge).  So why do I disagree?

Well, as part of my reconstruction process, I look at other works by the same author to see if there are any clues about some of the more unusual descriptions.  I am only aware of one other publication by Cellarius neveu, another polka quadrille, Arcachon, published in 1865, with figures by Cellarius neveu and music by H[ippolyte]. Barrez.

Both sets are available online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; look here ("Cinq Parties") and here ("Arcachon") for reference.

But when I looked at the figures included with the "Arcachon" music, hoping for some useful insights, I discovered that the figures were exactly the same as those with the "Cinq Parties" music.  Not only did I not get any new information, I got a puzzle to solve.  Two sets of quadrille tunes with the same figures published eleven years apart is somewhat odd.  Were either of the dates wrong? 

Nope!  

Here (second listing from the top in the right-hand column) is the "Arcachon" music listed in the 1865 Bibliographie de la France, and here (halfway down the left column; second listing under "Musique Pour Piano") is the "Cinq Parties" music listed in the 1876 edition.  "Arcachon" is definitely the earlier publication.  The "Cinq Parties" music must have been written, or at least arranged, specifically for these figures, since they're of unusual lengths.  But why?  The figures are certainly unusual, but were they so popular that they needed a new set of tunes?  Was Cellarius neveu so famous that it was worth republishing his figures eleven years later, but not famous enough to have any more (surviving?) published work?  I feel like there might be an interesting story here, but I don't know what it is.

Reconstruction-wise, knowing the figures are from 1865 means that figure performance needs to take into account the massive hoop skirts of the mid-1860s, such as the one shown at left (click to enlarge, or look at more illustrations here).  Even if you exclude the train, which might have been looped up for dancing, that's still a whole lot of skirt to accommodate, which affects how I choose to reconstruct and perform some figures.

 

 

 

 

 

Death by Persuasion (Midsomer Murders, Season 19, Episode 5)

I'm always pleased to see any film or television production make an effort to get the historical dancing right, but it's a big surprise when it more-or-less happens in a television series, which one doesn't necessarily expect to have the budget for a dance historian as choreographer and the proper music, or anyone on staff who even knows they need such.  I plowed reluctantly through a ninety-minute episode of a television show that, on the whole, I had no interest whatsoever in only to experience the delightful surprise of just under seven minutes of historically correct music and dancing that ranged from "acceptable kludge for television" to "wow, they got it RIGHT!"

That, as they say, was unexpected.  

Spoiler: I think I spotted Ellis Rogers, who literally wrote the book on quadrilles, in the background of a couple of scenes.  His involvement would explain a lot.  Unfortunately, the credits for the episode list Jim Parker for the music (which he may have played, conducted, or arranged, but certainly didn't compose) and no one at all for dance or choreography.  Edited 2/28/20 to add: Meryl Thomson of Green Ginger confirmed in the comments below that some of their recordings of Duval's Lancers were used in this episode.

Paine's Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (4 of 4)

(This is fourth in a series of four posts covering Paine's Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here, figures one and two here, and figures three and four here.)

Concluding my series on Paine's Twelfth Set, the final figure!

No. 5, tune "La Nouvelle Fantasia"
Figure.
Chassez croisez huit, les quatre Cavaliers en avant 4 mes, les quatre dames de meme, balancez tour de mains, la Cavalier seul en avant et en arriere 8 mes, la dame seul de meme. 
La Grand Promenade.

All 8 chassez across and back again, the 4 Gent: advance and retire 4 bars, the 4 Ladies the same, balancez and turn your partners, one Gent: advance and retire twice 8 bars, the opposite Lady do the same.  
Promenade all 8.

(This is fourth in a series of four posts covering Paine's Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here, figures one and two here, and figures three and four here.)

Concluding my series on Paine's Twelfth Set, the final figure!

No. 5, tune "La Nouvelle Fantasia"
Figure.
Chassez croisez huit, les quatre Cavaliers en avant 4 mes, les quatre dames de meme, balancez tour de mains, la Cavalier seul en avant et en arriere 8 mes, la dame seul de meme. 
La Grand Promenade.

All 8 chassez across and back again, the 4 Gent: advance and retire 4 bars, the 4 Ladies the same, balancez and turn your partners, one Gent: advance and retire twice 8 bars, the opposite Lady do the same.  
Promenade all 8.

Paine's Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (3 of 4)

(This is third in a series of four posts covering Paine's Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here and figures one and two here.)

Continuing on with Paine's Twelfth Set, the next two figures... 

No. 3, tune "L’Aimable"
Figure de La Poule. -- or
Le 4 dames font le moulinet pendant que les 4 Cavaliers font la grand Promenade a droite, ils donnent les mins a leurs dames et balancez tour de mains pour se remettre a sa place, les tiroirs a quatre et restez à la place opposee, de meme les 4 autres demie Promenade tous les 8, Jusqua [sic] votre place et tour de mains en place. 
Contre Partie.

The 4 Ladies moulinet while the 4 Gent: do grand Promenade to the right, the 4 Gents: give their hands to their partners, balancez and turn them round to their places, the tiroirs 4 and stop at the opposite place the other 4 the same, half Promenade all 8 to your places, and turn your partner round to your place.  
The same again.

(This is third in a series of four posts covering Paine's Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here and figures one and two here.)

Continuing on with Paine's Twelfth Set, the next two figures... 

No. 3, tune "L’Aimable"
Figure de La Poule. -- or
Le 4 dames font le moulinet pendant que les 4 Cavaliers font la grand Promenade a droite, ils donnent les mins a leurs dames et balancez tour de mains pour se remettre a sa place, les tiroirs a quatre et restez à la place opposee, de meme les 4 autres demie Promenade tous les 8, Jusqua [sic] votre place et tour de mains en place. 
Contre Partie.

The 4 Ladies moulinet while the 4 Gent: do grand Promenade to the right, the 4 Gents: give their hands to their partners, balancez and turn them round to their places, the tiroirs 4 and stop at the opposite place the other 4 the same, half Promenade all 8 to your places, and turn your partner round to your place.  
The same again.

Paine's Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (2 of 4)

(This is second in a series of four posts covering Paine's Twelfth Set.  The introductory post in the series may be found here.)

All right, let's move on to the actual figures!  In my transcriptions below of the French and English instructions, the capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and lack of accents over the French vowels are all as printed in the original.  

No. 1, tune "La Belle Flamand"
Figure de la Pantalon -- or
Quatre demie chaine Anglaise, les 4 autres demie chaine Anglaise, demie Promenade tous les 8, et tour de mains a votre place, chaine des dames celles qui ont commencez [sic], balancez 8 et tour de mains. 
Contre Partie.

Four half right and left, the other four the same, half Promanade [sic] all 8 to your place and turn your partners round, Ladies chain by those who began the dance, balance 8 and turn your partners round. 
The same again the other 4.

Paine's Quadrilles, Twelfth Set, 1819 (1 of 4)

As with my earlier reconstructions of Howe's figures for "Les Rats" and the third set of Simonet's Parisian Quadrilles, I was primarily motivated to reconstruct Paine's Twelfth Set of Quadrilles by the existence of a high-quality recording of the music.  I'm not sure what prompted Green Ginger to choose this quadrille, out of more than a dozen of Paine's other sets of quadrille music (besides his most-famous and oft-recorded first) to include on their CD of Regency-era dance music, Music for Quadrilles, but it's an excellent set of tunes played beautifully.  

I've used these recordings in the past as variant music for the standard quadrille figures, which they were structured to fit.  But Paine's original sheet music also included new figures for those who didn't want to dance the usual ones, and they turned out to have some unusual figures which I quite like.

The booklet of liner notes for Music for Quadrilles includes instructions for each dance; the quadrille ones are clearly Ellis Rogers' work.  I mostly agree with those reconstructions, but they are bare-bones figure lists with no steps or details of performance.  I have a few minor quibbles with figure interpretations and some of the musical repeats, and I think there are reconstruction issues with the fifth figure that are worth pointing out.

Un jeu d'échecs (a game of chess), 1810

Another themed quadrille described by Laure Junot, the Duchess of Abrantès, was the "game of chess" danced, or at least presented, at a masked ball in Paris in the February of 1810.  The quadrille was also described in her Memoires de Madame la duchesse d'Abrantes, which were published and republished in multiple volumes in a variety of editions.  The French text below was taken from an 1837 fourth edition published in Brussels, which may be found online here.  A contemporary (1833) English translation is online here, but it is not a close enough translation and omits some lines, so I've done my own, with reference to it.

Junot spent more time in her memoirs complaining about the costumes and rehearsal time required for this quadrille than she did on the actual performance, but from her description, it seems like very few of the pieces (dancers) actually got to do much, unless perhaps they danced as they entered the board.  But what little she describes does mention steps, and the costume descriptions give us a fairly good idea of how the dancers must have appeared: vaguely Egyptian pawns with tightly-wrapped skirts and sleeves like mummies and sphinx-like hairstyles, knights like centaurs with horse rumps made from wicker, rooks wearing wicker towers, and fools (bishops) in caps with bells.

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. 

Political Dance Jokes: The Italian Quadrille, 1859

The humor piece at left, "The Italian Quadrille" (click to enlarge), appeared in the June 4, 1859, issue of the famous British humor magazine, Punch.  It's obvious from the timing that it's satirizing the brief Franco-Austrian War of 1859, also known as the Second Italian War of Independence.  I love it when dance terms get used this way.  This one isn't as clever overall as the near-contemporaneous Quadrille Nautically Described (1856), but what it lacks in clever figures it makes up for in real-world meaning.

Some quick background on the war: it lasted from late April until early July of 1859 and featured a French-Sardinian alliance led by Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon) and Victor Emmanuel II fighting against Austria under Franz Josef I and the Hungarian general Ferencz Gyulai.  The Austrians were defeated, and major steps were taken toward the eventual unification of Italy and its establishment as an independent kingdom a couple of years later.

I'm no expert on this particular bit of history, but my understanding from secondary sources is that the English government was officially neutral, but quietly favored Austria, and that there was some popular sympathy for Italy.  The quadrille-based description here favors neither side, but the accompanying cartoon appears to me to be anti-Italian, at least: a British coin spinning toward an obvious racist caricature (short, ugly, swarthy, hairy) of an Italian organ-grinder.  I'm undecided as to whether the face is actually meant to represent anyone; Victor Emmanuel would be most logical, but it looks to me more like Louis Napoleon (especially in this picture).  The wider implication is presumably that the Franco-Italian side was interested in financial support from Britain.

Now, let's look at the actual text of the "quadrille".

Susan's Sociables

When I first wrote about the quadrille figure called the Sociable almost seven years ago, I noted that some sources offered slightly different sets of figures, and at least two suggested that the choice of figures was up to the caller:

"No positive rule as to what figure shall be called in the Quadrille Sociable.  The choice is left entirely to the prompter."  (Brookes, L. De G.  Brookes on Modern Dancing.  New York, 1867)

"Prompters often call figures in the 'Sociable' to suit their fancy, introducing the 'Star Figure,' 'Grand Chain,' etc."  (De Garmo, William.  The Dance of Society.  New York, 1875)

I rarely exercise the option to call variant figures; my habit has been to do the most common four-figure sequence twice over, once for the ladies to progress and once for the gentlemen, with an eight-bar "All chassez" and honors coda at the end.  Including introductory honors, this calls for a structure of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b.  Working with live musicians, I can have music played to fit this pattern exactly.  Or, if I am using the Sociable as the final figure of a quadrille, the short version with the progressive figures done only once (ladies progressing) is plenty, and since 8b + 32bx4 + 8b is a common finale structure, if necessary, it is easy to find a recording with that pattern.

But recently, I've been faced with the dual problems of calling the Sociable as a freestanding figure, meaning I prefer to call a longer figure to balance the time spent forming sets, and using recorded music, which is rarely to be found in the simplest long-Sociable pattern of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b.  This means either spending time editing a recording to fit the dance or changing my calling to fit the recording.  Editing music is a pain, so, since I have the option, historically speaking, of changing the figures, that is the approach I prefer.

Getting into the swing of things

There's a dance history question that comes up periodically that I have never been able to satisfactorily answer:

When did the "buzz step" swing become common in contra dance?

As I've been working my way through more and more American contra/country dance history, I've become more interested in this problem and kept track of a few useful clues.  

First, let's be clear about what the buzz-step swing is.  Here's a good demonstration of it as performed in contra dancing today.  Watch the feet closely.

The earliest clear description of the buzz swing in a contra/country dance source that I am aware of is by Elizabeth Burchenal, who published the explanation and diagram (click to enlarge) below in 1918, in her American Country-Dances, Volume I:

Buzz Step
This is a sort of pivoting step, used when swinging partners in place.  The man holds his partner in ordinary dance position, but well out to his right, so that they are practically side by side, with right shoulder to right shoulder.  

In fitting the step to the music, each measure should be counted ("one, and, two, and").  On "one," put down the right foot in place; on "and," step forward on the ball of the left foot; on "two," put down the right foot on the same spot as before; on "and," step forward on the ball of the left foot, and so on.  The step is usually continued for eight measures, and is merely a quick walk (or run) with the right foot always put down in the same place and the left foot always advancing.  More weight is put on the right foot than on the left, which gives a slight emphasis on "one" and "two."  With this step the man swings his partner around very vigorously.

Balance and Swing (or, "Swing Partners")
The most usual way of executing the "Balance and Swing" to-day, is for partners to meet, take "ordinary dance position" (the usual way of holding partner for waltzing), and swing around vigorously with the buzz step.  Originally the "Balance" was executed before the swing, but for some reason this has been almost universally abandoned, so that the expression "Balance and Swing" now means nothing more than "Swing Partners."

It's clear that at the time she was researching her dances and writing the buzz-step swing was already standard in contra.

Revisiting the Flirtation Figure

Almost six and a half years ago, I reconstructed and briefly discussed the Flirtation Figure, which appeared in William Lamb's How and What to Dance (London, 1903 or 1904) as a separate figure after the usual five figures of the first set of quadrilles.  My slightly revised reconstruction of Lamb's figure:

Flirtation Figure (8 bars + 32 bars x4 + 8 bars)
8b     Introduction (not repeated)
4b     Grand Circle: all take hands and forward and back
4b     All turn partners two hands
4b     All four ladies forward and back
4b     All four gentlemen forward, turn, and bow to lady at their left (their corner lady)
4b     Facing corners, all balance by stepping right, close left behind, step right, touch toe of left in front (1, 2, 3, 4); repeat to left
4b     Turn corners two hands, ending in gentleman's original place and taking closed hold
8b     All galopade around the set (four-slide galop to each position, alternating over hands/over elbows)
Repeat previous thirty-two bars three more times. After last repetition:
8b     Grand Circle and turn partners two hands

I recently noticed that versions of the Flirtation Figure appear as the fifth figure in a number of "old time dance" manuals published in England during the 1940s, including:

• Francis & Day's Ball Room Guide of Old Time Favourite and Modern Dances (London, c1940)
  
  
• Cecil Taylor, Old Time and Novelty Dances (London, 1944)
  
  
• Victor Sylvester, Old Time Dancing (London, c1949; 4th impression 1951)

Taylor and the Francis & Day book referred to it as the "Grand Circle" and danced it with a galop at the end of each figure, as in Lamb.  Sylvester gaves it no special title and had the couples promenade instead.  All three had the ladies curtsey in the center before retiring to places and gave very precise instructions that the gentlemen should advance, bow first to each other, then step back on the right foot, turn to the left, and bow to the corner lady.

Francis & Day also gave an adapted version of the figure in the "present day" version of the quadrille, which replaces turns and promenades with waltzing.  But I more interested in the history of the figure and how at least some writers in the 1940s considered it not an alternative figure but actually the standard Finale figure for the first quadrille.

The Sixdrilles (3 of 3)

Wrapping up my mini-series on the Sixdrilles, here are the final two figures and some overall thoughts.  The earlier figures can be found in my first and second posts in the series.

The Sixdrilles (2 of 3)

Moving right along from my first post in the Sixdrilles series, here are the reconstructions of the next two figures:

Figure Two: L’Été (8b introduction + 24bx4)
4b    First gentleman and two opposite ladies en avant and en arrière.
4b    Same three chassez-dechassez (à droite et à gauche)
4b    Same three traversez, gentleman crossing between the two ladies
4b    Same three chassez-dechassez
4b    Same three traversez/balancez [see note below] while partners balancez
4b    Same three rond de trois

The figure is then repeated by the second gentleman and the two opposite ladies, the third gentlemen and two opposite ladies, and the fourth gentleman and two opposite ladies.

The Sixdrilles (1 of 3)

The Sixdrilles are a clever reworking of the figures French Quadrille (or First Set) for a group of twelve dancers in the form of a square of trios, each consisting of a gentleman and two ladies.  I have two Scottish sources for them, which match fairly closely:

The Ball-Room, by Monsieur J. P. Boulogne (Glasgow, 1827).

Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide...Third Edition, by the Messrs. Lowe (Edinburgh, c1830)

Monsieur Boulogne is billed as French, but I know no more about him.  The Messrs. Lowe were a group of four brothers, all dance teachers, one of whom eventually became famous as dancing master at Balmoral for the family of Queen Victoria.  Their book is difficult to date, especially since it is a third edition.  A reference to the Sixdrilles being created around the time of the coronation of Charles X puts it at 1824 or later, and a late reference to the opera Guillaume Tell (Paris, 1829) at the very end of the book suggests 1830 onward.  The last half-dozen pages look like a later attachment, however, and may have been added for the second or third edition.  The Sixdrilles appear much earlier and are integrated into the overall work.

Whatever their precise date, Boulogne ensures that these particular trio-quadrilles are at least documentable to late-1820s Scotland.  Let me note, however, that the idea of a quadrille of trios is not unique to Scottish sources.  Either a lot of people had the same inspiration or there was significant borrowing of ideas (if not precise figures) going on.

In Germany, quadrilles for twelve (called Douzes) in four-trio (as opposed to six-couple) formations were published in the 1811 and 1813 editions of Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker's Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen and, closer in time to the Sixdrilles, in Christian Langer's 1824 and 1838 editions of Terpsichore.  In London, G. M. S. Chivers included a set of "Troisdrilles" in his mid-1820s The Dancing Master in Miniature, and in far-off Quebec, W. G. Wells included "Tredrilles" in his 1832 Danciad.  Wells copied most of his book from English sources, so I suspect his Tredrilles are likewise borrowed.  

Given Boulogne's nationality and the Lowes' tendency to borrow liberally from continental sources, it would not particularly surprise me if the Sixdrilles have a French or German source.  None of the other trio-quadrilles are precisely the same as the Sixdrilles, however.  The Becker Douzes have some interesting figures, but the Tredrilles and Troisdrilles are banal.

The Sixdrilles are excellent, however: intelligent variations on the basic figures that are easy to learn for dancers who know the First Set, as any good dancer of the 1820s would, and a convenient solution to the problem of having more ladies than gentlemen at a ball.  

Sadly, it is near-impossible to definitively answer the critical question of whether they were ever actually danced.  There's a dearth of written ball programs for the British Isles in this era, and the Sixdrilles need not even have been listed on such.  They were musically compatible with the First Set, so most of the room could be dancing a normal quadrille while a few individual sets danced in trio formation.  But since the imbalance of genders continues to be a problem today, I find it useful to have a solution documentable to dance manuals, if not to the dance floor.

Rethinking the right shoulder in Regency-era dos-à-dos sequences

It's been years since I've written about dos-à-dos sequences for the Regency-era quadrille, but I've been working on new ones on and off for most of that time.  Over the last year I've had more chances to teach them, both to my New York classes and in various cities in Russia, most recently Kirov, where I wedged a spontaneous dos-à-dos lesson into one evening's workshop.

One of the key points in my current "basic dos-à-dos concepts" class involves examining the meaning of the phrase "present the right shoulder", as found in sources like Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (Paris, 1811) by J. H. Gourdoux and Elements and Principles of the Art of Dancing, a translation of Gourdoux with some changes and added material published by Victor Guillou in Philadelphia in 1817.  Both texts use the same phrase (highlighted):

Pour remplir ce trait, un cavalier et une dame de vis-à-vis se présenteront l’épaule droite, et s’avançant, ils passeront dos-à-dos, en exécutant les trois chassés comme pour traverser, et rentreront à leur place, faisant le jeté et l’assemblé.  (Gourdoux 1811)

To dance this trait, the opposite lady and gentleman will present their right shoulder to each other, and perform the temps levé and chassé three times as for crossing over; and, turning around each other, they return to their stands doing the jeté and assemblé in the third position.  (Guillou)

I hadn't paid close attention to this phrase when working with basic dos-à-dos sequences long ago, but for the last few years I've been quietly studying more advanced step-sequences, which have given me some new insights.  The "right shoulder" detail should not be ignored. 

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.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chassé-Croisé with Scottish steps

I reconstructed Regency dancing master Thomas Wilson's Royal Scotch Quadrilles ten or so years ago and have taught them off and on ever since, eventually with music custom-recorded for me by the dance band Spare Parts.  But though I put the basic calls for the figures online years ago, I've never done a detailed write-up of my reconstruction.  One reason for that is that while I have long-since solidified my reconstruction of the figures, I've never been satisfied with the step-sequences I've used for one of the last figures of the dance, the chassé-croisé.

Chassé-croisé is a very common figure in Regency quadrilles: partners both face the center of the set, slide sideways to the corners (the gentleman passing behind the lady), balance, slide back, and balance again.  Each part takes two bars for a total of eight.  There are also four-bar versions that skip the balancing.  A couple of years ago I wrote a series of three posts covering different ways to perform the sequence with the French steps which are normally used in quadrilles, the first of which breaks down the figure in detail for those unfamiliar with it.

The problem for me has been that Wilson specifically said about The Royal Scotch Quadrilles that they were "adapted to Scotch steps", and my interpretation of that comment is that the figures should be performed using the best information we have on native Scottish dance steps of that era, the set of steps described by Francis Peacock in 1805, even if the Scots themselves were happily dancing French quadrilles with French steps by the early 1820s.  And that presents a problem with this particular figure.  

Unlike the French step repertoire, Peacock's does not include any equivalent of the jeté-assemblé combination that often concludes French step-sequences and has the handy effect of "resetting" the feet, leaving the weight balanced evenly so that either foot can be freed to start the next step.  That is particularly useful in setting up for chassé-croisé, since while the gentleman moves to the right and therefore can easily start with his right foot in the standard fashion for this era, the lady is moving to the left, and step-sequences call for her to start on her left foot, as may be seen in the sequences I have described previously.  If there is no jeté-assemblé, then the lady cannot easily free her left foot instead of her right.  And if she starts the sliding sequence with her right foot (there is a Scottish step that makes that a viable option) she ends up with her left foot free for the balancing, which is also non-ideal.  What to do?

Over the past decade or so I've experimented with adding "foot fudges" (extra changes of weight), started whole series of figures on the left foot, and sometimes allowed the dancers to balance in mirror image or left-first.  None of this is good period practice.  There are documented ways to cheat in historical quadrille footwork, but adding extra weight changes is not one of them.  There are occasionally step-sequences that start on the left foot, but doing a whole quadrille figure on the opposite foot from one's partner is just wrong.  And balancing is generally done with both dancers moving to the right, or on the right foot first, not to the left, and definitely not in mirror image.  It's been a constant irritation to me that I couldn't get this one element of this quadrille up to my own standards, to the point where I stopped teaching it unless specially requested.

So I'm particularly grateful to one of my students, who during a private tutoring session this afternoon made an offhand remark that abruptly solved the problem for me.  The answer has been right in front of me all along.

The Quadrille Nautically Described, 1856

This rather wonderful description of the figures of the First Set, or French Quadrille, appeared in the November 29, 1856, issue of Spirit of the Times; A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage, a New York journal published from 1831 to 1861.  According to ProQuest's bibliographic description, Spirit of the Times was said to "have been the first all-around sporting journal in the U.S.", specializing in racing but also including "field sports, hunting and fishing, agriculture, literature, fashion, and the theater...news, court proceedings, poetry, and advertisements.‎"  And, apparently, a description of dancing a quadrille in terms even a sailor could understand.

"The Quadrille Nautically Described" seems not to have been original to Spirit of the Times:

We have some idea that this capital jeu d esprit is not new.  But as our dancing season is just commencing, it may amuse some of our readers to see it reproduced.  It makes the noble art of dancing a quadrille clear to the simplest (nautical) capacity:

Some of the details of the quadrille description seem to hark back to an earlier era.  But I've had no luck tracing any earlier publication.  

After that brief introduction, the anonymous author then duly worked his way through the six figures of the First Set: Pantalon, Ete, Poule, Trenise, Pastorale, and Finale.  He uses an entirely new set of terms for the figures, and it took me a couple of readings to realize how clever a "translation" this actually was.  I'm accustomed to French and English terms for the quadrille figures, but I've never before read them in Nautical!

Let me translate it into English, figure by figure.

The Octagon Lancers, Figures 4 & 5

Winding up the Octagon Lancers, here are the last two figures:

The Octagon Lancers, Figures 1-3

Several years ago, I described the Royal Lancers (a.k.a. Horse Guards), one of the ways in which the famous Lancers Quadrille was adapted for a group of sixteen dancers.  I mentioned then that this was only one of several different Lancers adaptations for larger sets.  The Octagon Lancers is another take on the same idea, written about twenty years later by New York dancing master C. H. Rivers and published in his book A Full Description of Modern Dances.  The linked copy is not dated, but there's another copy of the book with a different cover but precisely the same contents which is dated 1885.  Rivers seems to have liked the octagon format; a few years later he created a non-Lancers octagon quadrille.

With the exception of the fourth figure, the Royal Lancers doesn't really take advantage of the larger formation.  The Octagon Lancers does a much better job of this, though its fourth figure is not quite as good.

The formation, in case it was not perfectly clear, is an enlarged square, with two couples on each side, as shown in Rivers' diagram at left.

Unlike the Royal Lancers, which has the "first couples" (and each other matching-numbered couple) as a facing pair, Rivers has the two first couples as neighbors on the side of the set.  He secondarily labels the two couples on each side the left couple and the right couple.  The first and second pairs of couples are considered the head couples, the third and fourth, the side couples.  Corner couples are, for example, the right couple of the first couples and the left couple of the third couples.

The first three figures of the Octagon Lancers are fairly simple adaptations, which I will cover below.  The fourth and fifth figures will get a separate post.

The Octagon Lancers is deliberately choreographed to fit the standard Lancers repeat structure, so any recording of the Lancers can be used.  A good one in mid-nineteenth century style is available on the Spare Parts CD Dancing by the Shore.

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. 

Walking Around

[T]he musicians are to engage in conversation, say half a minute or less...meanwhile, the dancers are meditating what is next

I'm never quite sure whether Elias Howe had a sense of humor, but to my twenty-first-century eyes, the above is the second-funniest bit of dance instructions he wrote or published.  Just visualize it: the dancers are standing around looking confused meditating what is next while the musicians stop playing and engage in conversation? 

Seriously???

A Polka Redowa Quadrille

My copy of Trifet's Acme of Dances (Boston, c1900) is a bit of a puzzle to date.  It's at least a second edition; an earlier (1886) version advertised 114 dances, while mine has 214.  It has a copyright date of 1893, but advertises the June, 1900, issue of Trifet's Monthly Budget of Music on the cover.  My best guess is that it is a c1900 reprint of an 1893 edition.

Inside, it is a bizarre mashup of several different sources, as evidenced by the changing fonts and formatting of the music.  The first forty-eight pages are easily recognizable to anyone who works with nineteenth-century dance music from the Boston area as having been printed from Elias Howe's plates; his font and his dance instructions are unmistakeable.  So is his tendency to set figured dances to any piece of music he could lay his hands on.

A Two-Step Quadrille, Pittsburgh, 1894

Here's a simple two-step quadrille that can be introduced with minimal practice time to any group of dancers familiar with the two-step of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. 

This three-figure set was published in 1894 by H. R. Basler, a music publisher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The figures are by Professor J. P. Brooks, presumably the James P. Brooks listed in a directory of dance teachers in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing as a Pittsburgh dancing master.  Brooks is listed as the creator of the American Gavotte, a bland little polka sequence also published in Gilbert's tome.  This quadrille is not wildly original either, but it's easy and a fun little excuse to two-step with everyone of the opposite sex in the set.

The sheet music for this quadrille is held in the Ralph Page Collection (Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, New Hampshire).  The music is by Horace Basler himself, who was apparently a composer as well as a music publisher.  The Pittsburgh Sheet Music Collection at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh holds quite a few pieces of music published, variously, by H. R. Basler; the Basler Music Publishing Co.; and Basler's Music House, all between 1879 and 1901, and many also composed by Basler.  

While dance instructions are on the sheet music, a slightly more detailed version appears in the 1917-1918 edition of Clendenen's Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette, which incorporates  B. Coanacher's Fashionable Quadrille Call Book and Guide to Etiquette, 1909.  Both the Clenenden and the Coanacher collections were published in Chicago, so the quadrille did get some exposure outside Pittsburgh.

Despite the reprint in Clendenen, I would not consider this quadrille a fashionable dance for 1917.  I don't know when the first edition of the Clendenen manual was published (one earlier edition is online), but judging from the fashions on the cover, I would guess the mid-1890s, and it does not appear that Clendenen cared much about current dance trends in the later editions. The instructions in the book note that the quadrille was adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing in the September of 1894.

Here's how to dance it:

Three "Scottish" Setting Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles

(This continues a very occasional series of posts on setting steps for quadrilles, with the previous posts including eight easy sequences and two French sequences.)

Calling these three sequences "Scottish" is really a bit of a misnomer, since the sources are Alexander Strathy's Elements of the Art of Dancing (Edinburgh, 1822), which is in large part a translation of a French manual by J. H. Goudoux, and an anonymous Scottish manuscript entitled Contre Danses à Paris 1818.  All three sequences are certainly French in their steps and style and quite possibly in origin.  They probably would not have caused anyone in Paris in that era to bat an eyelash.  But technically, they are documented to Scotland, not France, in the late 1810s-early 1820s.

Two French Setting Sequences for Regency-era Quadrilles

Several years ago I posted eight easy setting sequences for Regency-era French quadrilles and said in the comments I'd try to post more "soon".  That has now stretched to more than five years, but, better late than never, here are a couple of others, this time directly from a trio of French manuals by J. H. Gourdoux (or Gourdoux-Daux):

Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (2nd edition, 1811)
Recueil d’un Genre Nouveau de Contredanses et Walses (1819)
De l’Art de la Danse (1823)

Once again, these are easy sequences, but a bit more interesting than the previous set.

New Scotia Quadrille

A while back I discussed the wonderful dance CD Music for Quadrilles, by the English band Green Ginger (with Kevin Smith).  At the time, I skimmed over the tracks for five modern Scottish (RSCDS) dances, since I didn't have any way to check the ones with historical sources against the originals.  Since then, I've come across a copy of one of the editions of D. (David) Anderson's Ball-Room Guide, a "New, Enlarged, & Complete Edition", which the liner notes of Music for Quadrilles cite as the source for one of the historical dances, New Scotia Quadrille.

According to J. P. (Joan) and T. M. Flett in Traditional Dancing in Scotland, David Anderson taught in Dundee and in a number of other towns from c1850-1911.  His Ball-Room Guide seems to have gone through at least five editions, with the "New, Enlarged" versions appearing between the mid-1880s and late 1890s.  Since the one I examined is not dated, and I have no others to compare it to, I cannot date it precisely.

New Scotia Quadrille is a single-figure quadrille, one of several in Anderson.  No author is given, but it presumably was not Anderson himself, since he was not shy about putting his name on several other dances of his own creation in his book.  For the most part, it has very standard figures, much like other single-figure quadrilles of the late nineteenth century.  The RSCDS version follows the original instructions fairly closely.  But it has one interesting quirk at the end that did not make it into the modern version, and Anderson includes information on quadrille performance in (presumably) at least the Dundee area of Scotland during this era that is also of interest to me in showing regional variation.

I'll give the figures first and then discuss these details.

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (3 of 3)

(This is the third and final post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé.  Previous posts are here (with a general introduction) and here.)

My third and (so far) final sequence for an eight-bar chassé-croisé comes from Elements and Principles of the Art of Dancing, a translation of J. H. Gourdoux published by Victor Guillou in Philadelphia in 1817.  The translation, presumably of the 1811 Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville, is inconsistent in how closely it hews to Gourdoux's original.  This step sequence for chassé-croisé does not appear in the 1811 manual at all and may have originated with Guillou himself.

Even more than Gourdoux's own sequence, this one features different footwork for the gentlemen and the ladies.

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (2 of 3)

(This is the second post in a mini-series covering Regency-era step-sequences for the quadrille figure chassé-croisé.  See the first post for a general introduction to the figure.)

My second sequence for chassé-croisé actually comes from a French source, the second edition of Principes et Notions Élémentaires sur l’Art de la Danse Pour la Ville (Paris, 1811) by J. H. Gourdoux.  The same sequence reappears in his later manual, De l’Art de la Danse (Paris, 1823).  It is similar to the Strathy sequence described in my previous post, but the differences are quite intriguing.

I won't cover steps in this post, since I just summarized them in the previous one and no additional ones are required for Gourdoux's sequence.

Chassé-Croisé Sequences for Regency-Era Quadrilles (1 of 3)

By far the most common sequence variations to be found in quadrille manuals of the early nineteenth century are those for setting, forward and back, chassez-dechassez, and crossing over.  But a few manuals give sequences for more elaborate figures such as chassé-croisé, in which two dancers, side by side, change places and back.  There are quite a few ways to perform the figure, but the most common is probably that danced with one's partner in eight bars as follows:

2b    Change places, gentlemen passing behind ladies
2b    Set
2b    Change back, gentlemen again passing behind ladies
2b    Set

This can be performed just by two couples (heads or sides) or by all four at once, as in the classic Finale figure of the first set of French quadrilles. 

Simonet's Parisian Quadrilles, Third Set, c1820

There are many, many sets of early nineteenth-century quadrilles, most of which are simply new music for the First Set or include only minor variations on the standard figures.  While I don't normally publish reconstructions of the figures for random sets of quadrille music, this set is of particular interest because a high-quality recording of it is available on The Regency Ballroom CD by Spare Parts.

The music is from the first series of T. Simonet's Fashionable Parisian Quadrilles, Performed by the Bands of Messrs. Michau, Musard and Collinet, with their appropriate Figures as danced at Almack's, the Argyll Rooms and at the Bath & Cheltenham Assemblies.  The manual is undated, but in February, 1823, the fashionable magazine La Belle Assemblée reported the publication of "Nos. 42 and 43" of the series, commenting positively:

This is really an elegant little work both in its contents and its typography.  We recognize many of the quadrilles as being great favorites in the French metropolis, and the whole of them are composed in a very characteristic and original style.

The typography of this edition is certainly eye-popping by modern standards of design; the front cover alone features a dozen different fonts.  The first series includes only sets one through six and presumably is dated somewhat earlier.  

L'Alliance, Figure 6: Sebastopol

(Seventh and last in a series of posts on the 1856 dance L'Alliance.  An introduction and explanation of the steps may be found in the first post in the series.  Other figures: Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5)

The final figure of L'Alliance commemorates the culminating battle of the Crimean War, the lengthy siege of the fortress of Sevastopol, the panoramic depiction of which by Russian artist Franz Roubaud is shown at left (click to enlarge).  Appropriately, this is the longest and most dramatic figure of L'Alliance!