Capering & Kickery

Skeleton Dance

   A bit of Halloween silliness and a reminder that dance reconstruction is a broader field than one might think:

 

Saltator's "Promenades"

In the 1802 and 1807 editions of A Treatise on Dancing, the anonymous author, Saltator, provided a list of the "changes" for cotillions with a noticeable departure from the norm.  The mostly-standard list of cotillion changes was as follows:

le grand rond (all eight circle and back)
la main (turn by the right hand, turn by the left hand)
les deux mains (turn by two hands, then the other way)
moulinet des dames (ladies right hands across, left back)
moulinet des cavaliers (gents same)
rond des dames (ladies circle and back)
rond des cavaliers (gents same)
les allemandes (allemande right, allemande left)
le grand rond (same as at the beginning)

There are minor variations here and there; some lists insert a grand chaîne (grand chain) and/or promenade before the final grand rond.  Some lists include "balance and rigadaun" before each change; some don't.  And there are occasionally lists of entirely different changes.  But, in general, this set is pretty standard. 

By way of examples, here are the lists from Le répertoire des bals (La Cuisse, Paris, 1762), which is the earliest full explanation of the cotillion form (called la contredanse in France), and A New Collection of Forty-four Cotillons (Gallini, London, c1770).  Click to enlarge.

La Cuisse numbered the grand round first; Gallini considered that the opening figure (not listed on the page shown) and started his numbering with the right- and left-hand turns.  He also added the two extra changes before the final round.  But the core figures were the same, and in the same order.

Dancing to "The Bishop"

I recently attended a modern English country dance evening and happened to dance what in modern tradition is known "The Bishop", done to the tune "Miss Dolland's Delight".  As can be deduced from the title of this post, I would phrase that differently, but I'll get to that later on.

I play a little private game at modern dance events of trying to guess the decade of those dances that are based on historical sources and then figure out what (if anything) has been done to modernize them beyond removing the historical steps in favor of walking.  "The Bishop" was easy to guess as 1770s (it turns out to be from 1778).  It was also very easy for me to spot the three biggest modifications to it. 

Ready to play?

Here are the directions for the modern dance:

A1    1st Man cast to middle place, set to & turn 3rd Woman with 2 hands, finishing in middle place
A2    1st Woman the same with 3rd Man
B1    1st Couple gate up through 2nd Couple as 3rd Couple gypsy clockwise, then circle hands 6 L half way round
B2    1st Couple gate up through 3rd Couple as 2nd Couple gypsy clockwise, then circle hands 6 L half way round

It may be easier to visualize these figures with the help of a video.  Here's one that's well-made and shows the modern figures clearly.  The music is "Miss Dolland's Delight".

Can you pick out the three big modernizations aside from everyone just walking through it?

It's easy, right?

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.

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. 

The Dip Schottische

The Dip Schottische is one of the minor schottische sequences created by dancing masters in the early 1910s.  In this case, the author was one I. C. Sampson, of Lynn, Massachusetts, and the dance was published in both the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914).  Unfortunately, the dance instructions have one major ambiguity that makes it very difficult to come to a definitive reconstruction: what, exactly, does "turn" mean?  Here's the original language for one move in the dance:

"One Step" turn (pivot, four steps, two measures)

The problem is that there is no single "one step turn".  There are at least two very plausible candidates: the spin and the traveling turn, better known today as pivots.  If I had to guess which would be the "one step turn", I'd guess the spin, but there are some problems with that in regard to this particular sequence.  But there are problems with the traveling turn as well.  Here's some of what I considered when trying to choose between them:

We have a problem here...

Written on the Trans-Siberian Railroad somewhere between Novosibirsk and Moscow.  Just had to mention that!

At left is a page from a dance manual published in Philadelphia in 1904: Dancing Without an Instructor, by one Professor Wilkinson.  This is one of the challenges I gave to the students in my just-completed reconstruction class in Novosibirsk.  Could they reconstruct this version of the racket?

If you want to test yourself with it, click the image to enlarge it, but before diving into the technical details of the dance, take a step back mentally and read through the instructions as a whole.  Notice anything weird?

You should.  

Don't click through to the rest of the post until you think you've got it.

Thinking in Fives

I spent a lot of time thinking about quintuple-meter (5/4 or 5/8 time) dances earlier this year, though not much of it showed up on Kickery at the time.  Since historical dance description and terminology are not standardized, there's an important distinction to keep in mind for all dances with some association with the number five:

Five steps (or movements) in a dance do not necessarily imply 5/4 or 5/8 time.

End-of-fellowship thoughts

I wrapped up my New England Regional Fellowship at the end of May, and other than a few loose research ends that I will be making more library trips this summer and fall to wind up, I've mostly completed the initial stage of my cotillon project: gathering lots and lots of cotillons so that I have enough of them to make some meaningful analysis of the genre. 

Dancing the Bon Ton Gavotte

Having decided that the Bon Ton Gavotte was popular enough to perhaps be worth doing, how does one actually do it?

Let me start by noting that as reconstruction projects go, the Bon Ton Gavotte is a mess: two sources are ambiguous and the other two contradict each other.  Since they cannot all be reconciled, I cannot produce any really definitive reconstruction.  Instead, I'll go through the sources one by one and give my thoughts about the various options.

Dancing to "Wakefield Hunt"

Continuing my mini-series of Regency(ish)-era figure reconstruction...

The figures that appeared with "Mutual Love" (and a couple of other tunes) are a good example of tune/figure interchangeability -- specifically, of figures being reused with multiple pieces of music.  The other half of that interchangeability is tunes being recycled for different figures.  For that, I'm going to move on to the figures that appeared with "Wakefield Hunt'.  And the other figures that appeared with "Wakefield Hunt".  Yes, two figures, both alike in dignity (but completely different otherwise), in the fair 1770s and 1780s, where we lay our scene.  Two is actually a very small number; very popular tunes didn't go out of style and might be found with a dozen or more different figures over the years.

Dancing to "Mutual Love"

I get a lot of requests to tell people what dance figures to do to a particular piece of Regency-era country dance music.  The correct answer is "any historical figures that you like", since dance figures and tunes were mix-and-match during this period rather than locked together into tune-figure pairings with specific names.  So it's rare for me to do a through dissection of any particular set of figures.

But most people nowadays don't want to (or can't) call their own figures, and even people who don't want to try for that level of historical accuracy often do want to do figures in historical rather than modern style.  So I'm going to do a little series of posts doing historical reconstructions of the figures set to various tunes, which can then be used for that tune or any other tune of suitable length. 

First up: the figures that appeared in the 1770s with the tune "Mutual Love".

Revisiting Swing and Turn Corners

When I discussed the Regency-era figures "Swing Corners" and "Turn Corners" a few years ago, I touched briefly on an earlier source, Nicholas Dukes' A concise & easy method of learning the figuring part of country dances (London, 1752) that contained an earlier version of "Turn Corners" which used single hands (right, left, right, left) rather than two hands for the turns but had a different pattern than the Regency version of "Swing Corners".

For the sake of completeness, I need to add one more version to my little timeline. 

Howe's "Rats" Quadrille, concluded (3 of 3)

This is the third in a series of three posts discussing the "Rats" Quadrille, with this one covering the fourth and fifth figures.  See the two previous posts for introduction and background and the first three figures.

Howe's "Rats" Quadrille, continued (2 of 3)

On to the actual figures of Howe's "Rats" Quadrille!  Please see the first post in the "Rats" series for an introduction to the quadrille and links to sheet music. 

Revisiting Chassé Out

Almost four years ago, I discussed the quadrille figure "chassé out", or chassé ouvert, in a post discussing the reconstruction of a mid-century quadrille.  I've revisited the figure occasionally since then, both in its Regency-era context and in its unusual mid-19th century appearances in the quadrille calls of American dancing master Elias Howe, and found enough new information to be worth a fresh post on the topic and to make me reconsider how I would reconstruct the figure both for early quadrilles of the 1810s-1820s and for the quadrille sets published by Howe in 1858 and 1862.

Thoughts on stepping the Grand Chain in Regency quadrilles

It's not unusual for new sources to turn up that make me go back and reconsider a reconstruction.  It's a little irritating for it to happen less than a month after I finally get around to publishing one here on Kickery, and doubly irritating for it to be not a new source but old sources I simply hadn't looked at recently.  Fortunately, this is less a change in my reconstruction than further background and options.

In reconstructing the fourth figure of the Mid-Lothians, an early 1820s quadrille, I wrote in my reconstruction notes that "I've never found any description of what step sequence to use for this figure," referring to the grand chain.  Actually, I had come across such, many years ago, and they had simply slipped my mind.  But I was looking through quadrille sources for a different project and found them again, so here is a little more information about performance options for the grand chain.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 6

This is the sixth and last in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  Previous posts: The first figure; background information; and sources, second figure, third figure, fourth figure, fifth figure.

The sixth and final figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a combination of two similar Jacobite tunes, "Lewie Gordon" and "Over the Hills".  My ear isn't sophisticated enough to sort through Evans' arrangement and figure out which (or whether) individual strains are drawn from each tune.  Lewie Gordon was a son of the Duke of Gordon who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie and was exiled after Culloden.  "Over the Hills", also known as "O'er the Hills and Far Away" and "Over the Seas and far away", has a complex history and may have originally been from England.  It is familar to many today as the theme music for the Sharpe television series based on the Bernard Cornwell novels about a British rifleman during the Napoleonic Wars.

Lyrics and background on each tune as well as MIDI files for listening may be found at Christian Souchon's collection of Jacobite songs; there are individual pages for both "Lewie Gordon" and "O'er the Hills".  Note that all Souchon's pages play music immediately upon opening!  More lyrics for "O'er the Hills" may be found on the song's page at The Compleat Sean Bean, a Sean Bean (Sharpe in the television series) fan site created by writer Winona Kent.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 5

This is the fifth in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post in the series.  Second figure here.  Third figure here.  Fourth figure here.

The fifth figure of the Mid Lothians is set to the famous march of Clan Campbell, "The Campbells are Coming", with its rousing chorus, presumably not sung while dancing a quadrille:

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

The Campbells are coming to bonnie Lochleven

The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho!

There are many, many recordings of this tune available.  Though the lyrics were partly rewritten by Robert Burns in the late eighteenth century, the tune dates back at least to the Jacobite rebellions of the first half of the century.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 4

This is the fourth in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post in the series.  Second figure here.  Third figure here.

The fourth figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a combination of "Peggy's Love" and "Auld Robin Gray", though my ear is not good enough to pick out which strains are from each tune when filtered through Evans' arrangements.

"Peggy's Love", or "Little Peggy's Love" is a strathspey which has also been used for a Scottish Country Dance.  It is said to have been composed by William Marshall and published as "Lady Louisa Gordon's Strathspey" in 1781.  It was apparently used as the musical basis for a ballet at the King's Theatre Opera House (the professional home of Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson) in the 1790s.  Evans mostly retains the strathspey rhythm in his arrangement.

"Auld Robin Gray" was written in 1772 by the Scottish poet Lady Anne Lindsay, with a tune by Reverend William Leeves.  The song is something of a sequel to the classic Jacobite song "Logie O'Buchan" (note: music plays immediately upon opening this page) which mourns for the Old Pretender under the guise of a woman missing her lover Jamie while being pressured to marry someone richer.  In "Auld Robin Gray", she actually ends up married to Robin Gray before her true love Jamie returns for her.  The tune may be heard in a MIDI file created by Christian Souchon (plays immediately upon opening).  An arrangement by Hadyn may be found at Ball State University's Digital Music Repository.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 3

This is the third in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians, a set of quadrilles from the 1820s.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the first post and the second figure here.

The third figure of the Mid Lothians is set to "Riggs O'Barley", previously known as "Corn Rigs are bonie" but taking on a new name after being used by Robert Burns for his 1783 poem, "The Rigs O' barley".  Numerous recordings (with the Burns lyrics) are available.  It is also found on the sound track of a classic 1973 horror film, The Wicker Man, under the title "Corn Rigs".

Evans' arrangement consists of three eight-bar strains (ABC), with the A strain having an alternate second ending as well.  The thirty-two-bar figure is noted on the sheet music as starting on the A strain, so I would expect a repeat structure of A (ABACx4) with the initial A using the first ending and subsequent ones the second.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 2

This is the second in a series of six posts covering the six figures of the Mid Lothians.  The first figure, background information, and sources are discussed in the previous post.

The second figure of the Mid Lothians is set to a highly simplified arrangement of the "Lassie wi'the Lint-White Locks", a tune actually called "Rothiemurchies Rant" but so strongly associated with the Robert Burns poem from 1794 that Evans seems to have adopted the poem's title for the tune.  It is also known today as "The Graf Spee".  The tune is traditionally used for a Scottish Country Dance and can be heard on numerous recordings.  Some interesting background may be found at The Mudcat Café. 

Evans' version is in a different key and consists almost entirely of relatively sedate eighth notes, unlike the dotted strathspey rhythm of the original, which is given below the quadrille arrangement for comparison.

Evans trims the four strains of the original tune to three strains (ABC) of eight bars each, with the third strain being a repeat of the first with a slight variation in the last bar.  The figure is repeated four times.  Instructions on the music indicate the that the (thirty-two-bar) figure begins on the A strain, which also has repeat markings. so a repeat structure of A (ABACx4) or possibly A (AABCx4) seems indicated, which leaves the figures concluding on the same music (since C = A) as they began, as is typical for a quadrille figure.  Either way, the A strain ends up getting repeated three times in succession multiple times.  A (ABBCx4) would also be a possibility, albeit a somewhat odd one for a quadrille, and somewhat reduces the repetiiveness.  If not for the figure instructions on the music, I'd be inclined to go with A (BABCx4) just for a bit more variety.

The Mid Lothians (1820s Quadrilles), Figure 1

The Mid Lothians, A new Set of Quadrilles, was a set of traditional Scottish tunes selected by J. S. Pollock, "Professor of Dancing / late of Paris /", with the tunes arranged by R. W. Evans and new quadrille figures (given in French and English) choreographed by Pollock.  The undated music was published in London in the early 1820s (Google Books dates it to 1821), and the figures additionally appear in Pollock's La Terpsichore Moderne, Ninth Edition (London, c1824) and in Henry Whale's Hommage à Taglioni, A Fashionable Quadrille Preceptor and Ballroom Companion (Philadelphia, 1836).  The English-language instructions in all three sources are extremely consistent, though there are a few discrepancies between the French and English versions given on the sheet music. 

The set is cannily dedicated to Lady Gwydir, more familiar to students of upper-crust Regency society as one of the famous Patronesses of Almacks under her former name, Mrs. Drummond-Burrell.  Born in 1786, Lady Sarah Clementina Drummond, heiress of Lord Perth, married Peter Burrell in 1807, whereupon they both hyphenated their names to Drummond-Burrell to preserve the prestigious Drummond name.  In 1820, the couple succeeded Peter's parents to double honors as Baron and Baroness Gwydir (or Gwydyr) and Baron and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby.

The Mid Lothians refers to the area of Scotland around Edinburgh.  The title of the set and the use of well-known Scottish tunes may be an attempt to play off the success of Sir Walter Scott's popular 1818 novel, The Heart of Midlothian, or simply a reflection of the popularity of all things Scottish at the time.  Some of the tunes used are versions of those famously used by Robert Burns for his poems in the late eighteenth century.

Right & left: hands or not?

By the mid-nineteenth century, the only American dance manuals that contain large quantities of contradances are those from the New England area.  Others may have a few here and there, but not the pages and pages of them, or entire manuals of nothing but contras.  And, alas for reconstructors looking back 150 years later, the authors simply don't bother to explain how to do specific figures.  Presumably, everyone knew.

For most figures this isn't a particular problem; they're self-evident from the name or unchanged from earlier eras.  But there is one figure that is especially ambiguous to dance historians, and that is "right and left" or "rights and lefts".  The major reason for the ambiguity is good old Thomas Wilson, a dancing master in early nineteenth-century London and a prolific author.  Wilson wrote some of the most useful books on English country dance in all of dance history, with explanations, diagrams, and occasionally even steps for each figure.  But he had a somewhat unusual take on right and left.

Go Figure!

At our recent Regency Assembly, one of the dancers challenged my call of a "half figure eight" in a country dance, asking why it wasn't called a "figure four".  Casey, being an experienced dancer, knew exactly why, but he has excellent comic timing, and the comment broke up the room for a moment.

A geekier question would be why I was using the term "half figure eight" rather than the more typical plain "half figure".  That was for added clarity for modern dancers, who may not be as familiar with the nuances of Regency terminology, in which a sentence like "The figure of the dance is a double figure made up of five figures, the first being the figure" makes perfect sense.  Since it doesn't for everyone, let's figure out all those different usages of "figure"!

Although every Country Dance is composed of a number of individual Figures, which may consist of "set and change sides," "whole Figure at top," "lead down the middle, up again," "allemande," "lead through the bottom," "right and left at top," &c. yet the whole movement united is called the Figure of the Dance.
    -- Thomas Wilson, in The Complete System of English Country Dancing, London, c1815.

Fixing Fandango

There's a popular dance in the modern English country dance community which I often cite as a dance that has a Regency "feel" to it, albeit with some quibbles about the details.  That doesn't make it a Regency-era dance (it's decades too early), but it's an earlier version of the same style popular in the Regency and uses some figures that remained popular into the first quarter of the nineteenth century.  That makes it a reasonable dance to use for a Regency/Jane Austen event in the absence of dancers and/or a caller who can handle dancing in actual period style.  But it doesn't make the modern dance a good historical reconstruction even for its own era (leaving aside how close that is or isn't to the Regency era) without some major fixing up.

Swing Corners vs. Turn Corners

Two figures that turn up frequently at the end of country dances in the Regency era are "Swing Corners" and "Turn Corners".  The two are not interchangeable; in the early nineteenth century, "swing" meant to turn by one hand and "turn" meant to turn by two hands.  That's not the only difference between the figures, however.

Ladies' Double Chain vs. Ladies' Grand Chain

Sometimes, musicians and prompters for Quadrille dancing, when they intend "Double Ladies' Chain," say "Ladies Grand Chain." This is wrong: the figures are entirely dissimilar.
        --- William B. De Garmo, The prompter (New York, 1865)

A century later, this problem is still with us, as modern-day dance historians confuse the two figures when reconstructing quadrilles.  The problem is made worse by the plethora of terminology.  Though the first of the two is called either a Ladies' Chain Double or a Ladies' Double Chain, the second can be known variously as the Chain of Four Ladies, Les Chaine des Dames Continue, Ladies' Grand Chain, Ladies' Right and Left Around, or Ladies' Grand Right and Left. 

Let's take a look at the difference between the two figures.

The New York Lancers, Figure 1

I recently had the opportunity to reconstruct and teach a Lancers (Quadrille) variant created by New York dancing master Allen Dodworth and published in his lengthy Dancing and its relations to education and social life in 1885 as "Dodworth's New York Lancers."

The figures are easy ones which make a pleasant change of pace for those accustomed to dancing the popular standard Lancers figures or their Saratoga Lancers variant.  They are also the same length as those of the standard Lancers, though sometimes fewer repeats are needed, so they can be used with many existing Lancers recordings.  I thought it would thus be interesting to take a look at the New York Lancers figure by figure and side by side with the usual figures to see exactly how Dodworth went about creating his version. 

"A very old established Figure" -- Reconstructing "Lead outsides"

In the comment thread on an earlier Kickery post, How Do You Cast Off?, Ukrainian reader Oleksiy asked whether I reconstructed the country dance figure, "lead outsides."  I haven't used this figure in my own teaching because I've been hesitant to establish a definitive reconstruction in the absence of definitive source material.  But I've since revisited the figure and more thoroughly reviewed my sources and am now ready to offer a reconstruction which I consider to be fairly solid.

Wrestling with Belle Brandon

(Note: since this post was written, I've expanded my research on this figure and written a follow-up post, Revisiting Chassé Out, which discusses further sources and slightly alters my conclusion about the performance of the chassé out figure.)

Recently my English friend and fellow dance teacher/reconstructor Colin Hume asked on the English Country Dance mailing list for help on some American dances he plans to teach later this month at a festival.  He posted his notes (the final version is now up here) and asked for advice, since he's not a specialist on historical American dance.  I do a lot with quadrilles (French, American, English, Spanish, etc.) so I pounced on the challenge of the 1858 set he proposed to use, the Belle Brandon Set.  This five-figure quadrille is drawn from Howe's Ball-Room Handbook (Boston, 1858) by Massachusetts dancing master and music publisher Elias Howe. 

The first four figures were fairly straightforward, with the first three being pretty much the usual figures of the "First Set" of quadrilles that had been popular for nearly half a century when the manual was published.  Interestingly, they were a more old-fashioned version than those which were popular in the mid-century and which Howe prints elsewhere in the same manual.  Tell-tales include the use of "balance and turn partners" instead of a long balance figure and, in Figure 3, two people crossing back and forth and forming a line rather than four crossing back and forth and going into a basket formation.  It had been common practice from the 1810s onward to use three of the standard figures and then vary the last two, so this set is well within the quadrille tradition.  But the fifth figure proved a real challenge to reconstruct.

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

One of the difficulties in reconstructing 19th century quadrilles lies in the frequent inadequacy of the instructions for the figures.  This might include the lack of information on the amount of music occupied by a particular figure, unspoken assumptions about what is included in a figure, completely omitting a necessary figure or instruction, and the use of unconventional figures or timing.  One might simply ignore such dances, as there is hardly a shortage of quadrilles which lend themselves to straightforward reconstructions.  But for the dance historian it is an intriguing mental challenge to wrestle with these quadrilles and come up with workable reconstructions, even if at times this involves some creativity in the interpretation of the instructions.

Among these reconstruction challenges is the quadrille described in the notable mid-19th century source, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, 1865).  Popularly known as the Lobster-Quadrille, it is notable both for its specific geographic requirements (it is impossible to perform the figures anywhere other than the seashore), its unusual partnering (every couple must include a lobster), and its unique figures, such as the swimming somersault.

Bits of Bijou: The Missing Middle of Durang's 1848 Manual

Research on social dance history does not always involve direct work on specific dances, and occasionally I get diverted to detective work on related historical mysteries in different fields - music, language, biography, etiquette, publishing history, and more.  Over the last few weeks, I have pursued a successful quest for some pages missing from an 1840s work by Charles Durang.  The process of locating these pages illustrates some of the frustrations of working with 19th century sources and the care needed in studying them.

In her delightful overview of 19th-century dance and etiquette, From the Ballroom to Hell, Elizabeth Aldrich states that Durang (1796-1870) was a dancer at the Bowery Theatre who later taught dance in Philadelphia with his daughter Caroline and published at least four dance manuals.  I started looking for a copy of Durang’s The Ball-Room Bijou and Art of Dancing as part of the research for a particular set of quadrilles and rapidly found myself in the midst of a publication puzzle.

It was not particularly difficult to track down a copy of Bijou – the University of California has a copy in its collection, which has conveniently been digitized by Google. But, to my dismay, that copy appeared to be missing its middle: the page numbering jumped abruptly from page 50 to page 113 and then skipped from page 155 over to the final page, 158.  While the complete description of the set of quadrilles I was researching was included in the available pages, I was both hopeful of more details on some of the steps in the missing pages and just plain annoyed at not having the complete work.  I assumed the California copy was damaged and over time the pages had simply been lost, so I took advantage of a planned trip to the New York Public Library to look over their collection of Durang, including three separate copies of Bijou, in quest of the missing pages.

One Year Later (In Memoriam)

One year ago today, I hugged my dear friend, teacher, and mentor, Patri Pugliese, good-bye and walked out the door to run a Regency-era tea dance.  The dance was remarkably successful, but when I came back to tell him about it, he was gone.

Yesterday, I ran the same dance.  It was even more successful this year.  I will never again have the joy of sharing my dance accomplishments with Patri, but today, in his memory, I'm going to talk about three lessons I learned from him about dance reconstruction.

Star Light, Star Bright: Reconstructing the "Star" Quadrille Figure

In his manual on quadrilles, early 19th-century (“Regency”) London dancing master Thomas Wilson wrote hopefully that his diagrams,

... together with the printed Directions appended, will enable any person, by marking the Figures on a floor, to perform them correctly without the aid of a Master.
    Thomas Wilson, The quadrille and cotillion panorama, 2nd ed., London, 1822

Quadrilles, the ancestors of the modern square dance, were popular in England from the 1810s onward, displacing the longways country dance from its former preeminence in the ballroom.  Wilson’s diagrams and directions are in fact quite helpful in deciphering many of the figures needed for the Regency-era quadrille, but he does have occasional failures, as in the figure “L’Etoile” or “The Star”.