Capering & Kickery

A Fancy Ball in York, 1828

A Fancy Ball is one of the most exhilarating of all entertainments.  Free from the licentiousness, which is too often practised under a mask, there is yet a sufficient absence of restraint—a sufficient feeling of joyous excitement—to banish busy care, and to lead the votaries of Terpsichore to the very height of enjoyment.

So begins the coverage on page four of The Yorkshire Gazette (York, England) on Saturday, September 27, 1828, of a Fancy Dress ball held the previous evening at the York Assembly Rooms and Festival Concert Room.  Note the distinction between a masquerade (with the guests anonymous "under a mask") and a fancy, or fancy dress, ball, for which people wore costumes but did not mask.

Music was provided by the band of the King's Dragoon Guards, though "Litolff's fiddle" is also mentioned, possibly a reference to Martin Louis Litolff, formerly a military band member in Napoleon's army and father of the more famous Henry Litolff (as described on the younger Litolff's Wikipedia page).  On December 24, 1802, a Mr. M. Litolff, "Musician, lately arrived from France", advertised his services as a teacher and accompanist in London's  Morning Post:

I don't know anything about his career or whether it was likely for him to have played as part of, or alongside, a military band in England, or whether the reference was merely a poetic flourish on the writer's part.

A roped-off space in the center of the Festival Concert Room was reserved for the dancers, presumably to protect them from the crowds: the estimated attendance was 2400 people, which I would say qualifies as a crush.  Attendees trickled in from 9:00pm to half past midnight and beyond.

There was not much mention of dancing in the article, probably because there wasn't much of it:

Dancing parties were formed occasionally; but the room was too hot, and too much crowded, to render dancing a pleasant exercise.  And the majority of the company preferred lounging about the room to treading the mazes of the dance. 

Chivers' La Grande Polonaise, 1821 (1818?)

La Grande Polonaise was published as an individual work by G. M. S. Chivers, probably early in 1821.  The first trace of its publication I have found is toward the end of an ad from London's Morning Post on Thursday, March 1st, 1821, for an Assembly to be held the following Monday.  The ad is shown at left; click to enlarge.  [see update note below for more information about the dating of this dance] 

La Grande Polonaise is not on the list of dances definitely planned for the assembly, but the author -- presumably Chivers himself -- noted that "several new Species of Dancing" would also be introduced, so it is possible it was danced at that event.  Its price of two shillings is the same at which it would later be advertised in the back of Chivers' third major book, The Dancing Master in Miniature (1825). 

I am not aware of any surviving copy of the original publication, alas, but the figures for La Grande Polonaise were also printed in Chivers' second book, The Modern Dancing Master (1822).  Chivers' description of the dance from that book:

La GRANDE POLONAISE, is generally thought to have originated in Poland, and it is a favorite Dance of the Polish Nobility.

The dance commences with a Tune in March Time, and terminates with a Sauteuse, and will require at least ten or twelve couple to perform it.

Any number of persons can join in the Dance; observing that there is an even number of couples; and no person should join after the Dance has commenced.

The figure given, is the same as was performed when the Allied Sovereigns were at Aix-la-Chappel.

I am extremely skeptical of Chivers' claim that this was danced at the Congress of Aix-la-Chappelle in 1818.  While the average London dancer might not have been familiar with the polonaise, a musical form and dance in 3/4 time, the Continental attendees probably would have been, and are unlikely to have danced a "polonaise" to march (4/4) music.  I expect they danced a polonaise (probably more than one, as the Congress lasted for two months), but I very much doubt it was this "polonaise".

Given Chivers' track record of choreographic creativity and blithe unconcern for accuracy in labeling dances, however, I do find it perfectly plausible that he created this dance himself and, out of ignorance or deliberate choice, used a march tune and an ordinary marching (walking) step rather than a polonaise step.  I thus consider La Grande Polonaise to be a purely English invention, not a Polish or even French dance, and not representative of early nineteenth century polonaise in general.  Nor, as a niche dance by a specific dancing master, would I expect it to have been widely danced outside London or even outside Chivers' own events.  But for a specifically English ball of the early 1820s, it's reasonable and unusual enough to make a pleasant change of pace.

Regency Oddities: Roger de Coverley

Wrapping up my little series on extended-Regency-era oddities, let's talk about an unusual version of the English finishing dance, Sir Roger de Coverley!  This is one of the rare dances where tune and dance are so tightly associated that it's reasonable to give the dance the tune name.

I discussed a typical Regency-era version of the classic Sir Roger de Coverley figure long, long ago.  Since then, I've accumulated a number of other versions of the figure with the same characteristic elements: opening figures performed on the long diagonals followed by whole-set figures that end with the original top couple progressed to the bottom.  I've written up a couple of later nineteenth century versions here and here.

Now, this is not to say that there were never any other, more typical, country dance figures set to the "Roger de Coverley" tune.  In its earliest appearance with dance figures in the ninth edition of Playford's The Dancing Master, published in 1695, it is printed with a normal progressive figure, completely unrelated to the later dance.  One hundred and thirty years after that, a different figure, very generic-Regency, was published with it in Analysis of the London Ball-Room (printed for Thomas Tegg, London, 1825).  Never underestimate the willingness of music publishers and dancers, to recycle a tune.

But there's one set of figures I've found printed with "Sir Roger de Coverley" which is a real oddity:

Regency Oddities: Heys for Four

When I add new extended-Regency-era country dance tune books to my collection of photos and scans, one of the things I do is quickly skim through the figures looking for anything out of the ordinary.  And while heys (or reels) are quite common figures for country dances in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (indeed, all the way back to the seventeenth century!), in this period, they are almost always heys for three.  Figures like "hey your own sides", "hey contrary sides and hey your own sides", "hey top and bottom" (where one dancer in a couple goes up and one goes down the set), and the corner-formation heys where the lady heys with two gentlemen and the gentleman with two ladies are all very common.  But these are all heys for three dancers.  A "right and left" quite round is technically a circular hey for four, but a classic, Scotch reel-style hey for four dancers in a line is not listed as a standard figure and doesn't really turn up.  

Until, of course, it does. 

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.

Anti-Masquerade Americans, 1794 and 1837

Welcome to October: masquerade and fancy dress month on Kickery!

To start things off on a different note, let's look at some of the anti-masquerade sentiment found in the early years of America.  Full transcriptions of the articles cited may be found at the end of the post.

On December 22, 1794, the Gazette of the United States and daily evening advertiser (Philadelphia) published an "extract of a letter from an American Gentleman in London" dated December 20th.  This might or might not have been a genuine letter, as opposed to editorial-moralizing-disguised-as-correspondence, but it represented the conservative sentiment about masquerades in what was at the time the capital city of the young United States.  Naturally, the English were still attending such shocking entertainments, providing the convenient opportunity to run a titillating description for their readers.

The gentleman, upon entering the masquerade, at first found his situation "awkward" and felt "sensations, bordering upon disagreeable".  But, realizing his anonymity, 

"...the apparent ease of all around me; the intoxicating strains of the well adapted music, and above all the indescribably contagious influence of the place; set me free from every restraint, and gave my soul the same riotous sense of pleasure, which seemed to have full possession of all around me."

Above left is an 1811 English drawing of a masquerade (click to enlarge) by prominent caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson; you can see the "freedom from restraint" in the prominent "HORNS TO SELL" sign (suggesting a volunteer for cuckoldry) and the man in the red domino at far right about to pinch the derrière of the cross-dressed woman in yellow.  The women's small half-masks are obvious, but some (possibly all) of the apparent faces, particularly the bearded and long-nosed ones, were also masks.  The anonymity of masks was, theoretically, the difference between a masquerade and a fancy dress ball, which involved costumes without masks.  This difference could get somewhat blurry, especially with costumes that worked as disguises.

Dancing to "Leap Year", 1793

Since 2020 is a leap year, here's an appropriate tune and a very generic dance to go with it.  The tune and figures were published in London in Thompson's Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1793.  These little books of country dance tunes were generally published late in the previous year, so this tune probably dates from 1792, another leap year.  I don't have permission to republish the original image, but here is the tune in modern format:

 

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!

Wilson's "Maze" figure

Stating that Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson's personally created new figure, "The Maze", appeared in published country dance figures is a bit of an exaggeration: I've found it exactly twice, once in Thompson's 24 Country Dances For the Year 1814 and once in L'Assemblée, the latter being a book of forty-eight country dance tunes with figures by Wilson which was published in 1819.  (The Thompson book also noted prominently on its cover that its figures were by Wilson.) 

I can't rule out other appearances of the figure, but after skimming through most of my Wilson sources with no further luck, I'd say that The Maze, like True Lover's Knot (but unlike Double Triangle) qualifies as a genuine rarity.  That means that it's not a typical Regency dance figure, the odds of anyone other than Wilson's own students knowing it were fairly low, and one shouldn't call it today unless certain one's set already knows it or prepared to explain or teach it.  I'll provide a simple explanation below.

Like Wilson's other new figures, The Maze appeared in at least three of in Wilson's country dance figure books, the earliest of which I've found it in is the 1811 third edition of An Analysis of Country Dancing.  It also appears in the fourth edition of Analysis (1822) and in  The Complete System of English Country Dancing (c1820).  Happily, the diagram shown at left (click to enlarge) is the same in all three sources and the description varies only in the location of the line breaks.  This particular image is taken from Complete System.

Wilson's "Double Triangle" figure

Like the True Lover's Knot, the Double Triangle is another of Regency-era dancing master Thomas Wilson's personally-created country dance figures, used, as far as I can tell, exclusively by Wilson himself.  Since it is not a standard Regency figure, it is of limited utility.  I myself would use it only if, for some reason, I were doing a very Wilson-focused workshop or event.  In general country dancing, a lady calling "double triangle" will simply create confusion, since no one but a serious scholar of Wilson's work is likely to have the slightest idea what it is.  

One reason to look at it in a bit more detail, however, is that Wilson himself seems to have been fond of it.  It appears over and over in Wilson's own country dance figures.  While I haven't made an exhaustive survey, it would not surprise me if he used it more than any other of his new figures.  It appeared in numerous figures in Wilson's enormous compilation of country dance tunes, A Companion to the Ball Room (London, c1820) and in L'Assemblée (London, 1819), a book of forty-eight country dance tunes with accompanying figures.  But it also turned up in figures Wilson did for books published by others.  There are several occurrences of it in, for example, Thompson's 24 Country Dances For the Year 1813 and Thompson's 24 Country Dances For the Year 1817, both of which are advertised on their covers as including figures by Wilson. 

Since this makes it a figure which dancers looking for country dance figures might come across and be puzzled by, and, I suppose, slightly more likely than most of Wilson's new figures to have filtered out into the world beyond his studio, it seems useful to talk a little about how to dance it and how to explain and teach it efficiently.

At left is the diagram of the Double Triangle as it appeared in the third (1811) and fourth (1822) editions of Wilson's An Analysis of Country Dancing.  The 1811 edition is the earliest source I have for the figure.

This particular image (click to enlarge) is taken from the fourth edition.  Calling the dancers' paths triangles involves a bit of artistic license, given the loops on the corners, but the connection between name and figure is clear. 

Wilson's text, unfortunately, is not only completely dependent on the diagram, it's also confusing in referring to the active gentleman in two different ways:

The Lady at A moves in the direction a round the top Gentleman, then outside the second Gentleman, round the third Gentleman, and returns to her situation in the line b; at the same time the Gentleman at B moves in the direction c and performs the figure on the opposite side, returning to his situation in the direction d.

Album Review: A Midsummer Regency Romp

Well, it's only taken me three years to get around to reviewing this digital-only album from the top-notch UK dance band Green Ginger!  A Midsummer Regency Romp came out in the summer of 2016, and I've been happily using tunes from it off and on ever since.

The short version of the review: buy the album from Bandcamp here!  But be aware that (1) the time range is rather wide for "Regency", (2) only eleven out of fourteen have suitable repeats (six) for historical style dancing, and (3) one of those is...problematic.  Contact Green Ginger directly for extended (twelve-repeat) tracks.  And be wary of the dance reconstructions in the accompanying booklet.

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?

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.

Dancing to "Mr. Chivers' Whim"

I recently had a request in email for anything I had on the Regency-era dance tune "Mr. Chivers' Whim" from a questioner who had some mismatched figures (twenty-four bars) and music (thirty-two bars) but no original sources.  A little back-and-forth established that he wanted the most historical answer, which is presumably why the question came to me and not whoever popularized what they're doing under that name in eastern Europe.  This isn't the first time I've had this topic come up in conversation!

So, what's going on with "Mr. Chivers' Whim"?  Well, at some point in the last decade or two, the name became firmly attached to a twenty-four bar "Swedish dance", meaning a trio country dance.  People in Russia are mostly dancing it to the tune "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz", which is of course a different tune, and a waltz, not a reel.  Switching tunes is not inappropriate to do in a historical context, but it's incorrect to call it "Mr. Chivers' Whim" when they're dancing to "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz".  The name goes with the tune, not the figures.

To compound the problem, they're often using the Spare Parts recording of "Mrs. Chivers' Favorite Waltz" from the CD The Regency Ballroom, on which it is played with a forty-eight bar repeat structure, which means that the figures cross the music oddly; it's alternately danced to AAB and BC strains (the C strain is sixteen bars long).  That is actually wrong, from a historical perspective.  Take a look at this video and you can see/hear the problem clearly, though I am not singling out that group in particular; there are several similar videos from different groups in different cities.  That one just happened to come up first in my search results. 

I'm not sure where the thirty-two bar music comes in, but there's certainly a problem here.

Mrs. Walker's Masqued Ball, 1804

Jumping from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century:

I first came across a description of Mrs. Walker's Masqued Ball as it was published in a Philadelphia journal, The Port-Folio, on January 19, 1805, with a credit to the The Morning Post, a noted London newspaper which famously covered the social activities of the upper classes in Regency England. 

For several years, I had the article filed under the date 1805, but with a suspicious note attached because the outdoor party described (with a hostess concerned about the possibility of the heat being "oppressive") didn't sound likely to have occurred in January, even in England.  I still haven't found the original Morning Post article, but I did turn up a shorter version of the same description (minus all the costume information) that was published in The Lancaster Gazette (of Lancaster, England, not Lancaster, Pennsylvania) on Saturday, July 14, 1804, with one critical word present:

on Wednesday se'nnight         [emphasis mine]

In the longer piece in The Port-Folio, this line was altered to "on Wednesday evening", presumably because it was being reprinted seven months later.  I believe that "se'nnight" would make the date of the ball Wednesday, July 4th, 1804, a much more sensible date for an outdoor event.

British newspapers covered many masqued balls, but most of the descriptions weren't quite as detailed as this one.  I've included a transcription of the entire article (Port-Folio version) below.  I'll just pick out a few of the points that really caught my eye.

Fessenden's "The Rustick Revel", 1806

Reading onward in Thomas Fessenden's Original Poems (1806), what should turn up but another poem about dance, even lengthier and more detailed than "Horace Surpassed"!  "The Rustick Revel" is less impressive as a poem, being made up entirely of rhyming couplets of utterly regular rhythm, but it's even thicker with dance references.  As Nathaniel Hawthorne said in his biographical sketch of Fessenden:

He had caught the rare art of sketching familiar manners, and of throwing into verse the very spirit of society as it existed around him; and he had imbued each line with a peculiar yet perfectly natural and homely humor.

Hawthorne was referring to a different poem, but it could easily serve for this one as well.  Among the highlights are the very calculated invitation list, the squire calling a dance, people messing up the figures, and trying to get out of paying the bill.

Once again, I'll give the entire poem in bold with my own commentary interspersed in italics.  Fessenden's own footnotes have been moved to the end.

Fessenden on New England country dancing, 1806

"Horace Surpassed" (lengthily subtitled "or, a beautiful description of a New England Country-Dance") was published by the American author Thomas Green Fessenden (left) in his 1806 collection, Original Poems.  Fessenden (1771-1837) was, according to the biographical notes here, a lawyer, poet, farmer, journalist, newspaper editor, and member of the Massachusetts legislature.  He was born in Massachusetts, educated at Dartmouth, and spent most of his life in New England.  His original fame as a poet grew from the 1803 work "Terrible Tractoration", a satire about physicians who refused to adopt a quack medical device.  (Yes, really!)

In his spare time, Fessenden evidently liked country (contra) dancing, and his poem is a cheerful look at the characters of rural New England society: agile Willy Wagnimble, clumsy Charles Clumfoot, graceful Angelina, etc.  The "New England Country-Dance" in the subtitle should be understood as referring to a social evening, not to an actual country-dance.

A rather catty review quoted the poem at length

not because it is superiour to the rest, but as a fair specimen of the work, and it describes an amusement which is "all the rage."
        --- The Monthly anthology, and Boston review. (July, 1806)                     

Fessenden topped his poem with a quote from Horace's Odes.  "Iam satis terris nivis atque dirae" ("Enough of snow and hail at last") is the opening line of "To Augustus, The Deliverer and Hope of the State" (1.2).  This particular Ode concerns the disastrous overflowing of the Tiber, possibly as a punishment of the gods for the ill deeds of Rome (notably, the assassination of Julius Caesar), with Augustus as its hoped-for saviour. An 1882 translation of the Ode may be found here.  I must confess that I cannot detect any thematic connection between it and Fessenden's poem, so I'll chalk it up to Fessenden's ego and desire to be recognized as a poet.  

The full original text with my best approximation of the formatting is in bold below, with a few comments of my own interspersed in italics.  In the absence of page breaks, the footnotes have been moved to the end.  

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.

Common Reel of Five

Having started out with the complex "New Reel of Five" created by Regency London dancing master Thomas Wilson, it seems that it would be useful to go back and discuss the "common" reel of five which Wilson included in his books along with his own inventions "to render the work more complete."  It's hard to say how "common" this reel actually was, as I have no sources for it other than Wilson.  It's possible that it was simply so common that no one else saw any need to write it down.  I certainly see no reason for Wilson to have presented it falsely; he was not the least bit shy about taking credit for his own choreography.

The diagram given by Wilson in his  The Complete System of English Country Dancing (London, c1815) is above at left.  The original text, from the same source:

The Lady in the middle at B, heys with the Ladies at A C, then sets to them, then heys with the two Gentlemen at F D, and takes the place of the Gentleman at F, who will then occupy the centre: he then finishes the Reel by setting to the persons at F D, then hey with the Ladies at C A, and leaves one of them in the centre, so that they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure.  

That's reasonably straightforward, though his blithe assurance that "they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure", if taken to the extreme of dancing until everyone is back in their precise original places, will require an awful lot of repeats.  Wilson gives his reel specifically for either three gentlemen and two ladies or vice-versa, but the gender of the five dancers has no effect on the dance.  Any combination, or five of one gender, will work fine.

How did I get here?

Certainly it’s true that when you’re dancing “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot” or “The Duke of Kent’s Waltz”—two traditional English country dances of the early 19th century—it is natural to ask: “How the hell did I get here?”
            --  Ted Scheinman, in "Cosplaying Jane Austen", The Atlantic, July 22, 2017

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment; somehow, I regularly find myself dancing what people fondly refer to as "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot" and/or "The Duke of Kent's Waltz" and I invariably wonder, in a sort of scholarly despair, just how I ended up in that situation.  In my case, however, it's generally because I am surrounded by people who are under the delusion that these are, in fact "traditional English country dances of the early 19th century."  

Normally, I simply avoid discussing this topic outside academic circles, because people can be remarkably resistant to historical evidence when it interferes with their pleasant fantasies.  But when this misinformation turns up in the virtual pages of The Atlantic, which I read regularly and generally have some respect for, I feel like it might be useful to respond in a more public way than just a note in the comments.

I don't delude myself that they're going to issue any corrections.

Wilson's New Reel of Five

At various points over the years I've written up descriptions of early nineteenth century London dancing master Thomas Wilson's choreographed Scotch reels for three, four, and six dancers, but, though I reconstructed and danced Wilson's new reel for five dancers several years ago, I've somehow never gotten around to posting about it.  Let me remedy that now!

 

First, it should be noted that Wilson's New Reel of Five was and is not the only reel for five dancers in existence.  Wilson himself gave the "common" reel of five alongside his own works, and another reel of five was given in Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, third edition (Edinburgh, c1830).  There may be other reels of five as well; I've not made a comprehensive survey.  The appearance in the Lowe's book suggests that a reel for five dancers has legitimate Scottish roots, but Wilson's choreography is a bit more elaborate and should be considered an English creation rather than a native Scottish dance.

 

I've seen the "common" reel of five danced at balls (a video of dancers in Moscow performing it may be seen here), but never either of the others.

Waltzing Around

A recent mailing list discussion centered on how to quickly teach people to do a "waltz-around", the style of country dance progression in which two couples waltz around each other once and a half times.  This is most famously part of the mid- to late-nineteenth-century Spanish Dance, as well as other American waltz contra dances (such as the German Waltz and Bohemian Waltz).  It dates back at least as far as the late 1810s to early 1820s in England, when Spanish dances were an entire genre of country dances in waltz time, and both they and ordinary waltz country dances featured this figure, sometimes under the names "poussette" or "waltze".  I expect it goes even further back on the European continent, but I haven't yet pursued that line of research.

As a dancer, the waltz-around has always been one of those figures that I just...do.  I'd observed that it's difficult for beginners to master the tight curvature of the circle and making one and a half circles in only eight measures, but as an experienced waltzer, I've long been able to do it instinctively.  And I'd never broken down precisely what I did or worked out how to explain it to others.  

So I suppose it's about time!

A miscellany of mescolanzes

I don't often get asked to write about particular topics on Kickery, but I recently received, via the comments here, a request from a teacher at Mrs. Bennet's Ballroom, a historical dance group in London, UK, for a few of my favorite figures for mescolanzes, the four-facing-four country dance format I surveyed earlier this year.  Since the focus of the group seems to be the Regency era, I'll stick with figures from manuals by London dancing master G. M. S. Chivers, which are from the very tail end of the official Regency period (1811-1820) and a few years after.

As I discussed in my earlier survey, Chivers seems to have really liked the mescolanze format, and a few other dancing masters and authors picked it up, but other than the special case of La Tempête, I can't really say with confidence that mescolanzes were a popular or even common dance form in nineteenth-century England.  But the format appears across enough different sources that I'm comfortable with using it sparingly to add variety for the late Regency and immediate post-Regency era.  I don't ever do more than one mescolanze at a ball, however.

Mescolanze figures are derived from country dances and quadrilles, with some figures from the latter descending from much older French contredanse (cotillon) figures.  A characteristic figure, of course, is the famous chassé-by-couples featured prominently in La Tempête.  Since the group already has that dance in its repertoire, I'll not include any others with the same figure.

Dancing in Love & Friendship

After I saw Love & Friendship back in June, I mentioned in my post on the Kentucky Reel that I would talk about the dance scene in more detail once I could get my hands on the DVD and watch it more carefully.  That having finally occurred this month, here are a few thoughts.  

The short version is that while the music is accurate to the era, which is a pleasant change from many other Jane Austen adaptations, and the scene effectively captures the general feel of a small, informal dance of that era, the actual choreography fails in the details.  There are just too many alterations to the traditional choreography to call it truly authentic.  But it's a reasonable effort, much better done than in most Austen films, and many of the modifications are at least nineteenth-century in style, so overall it does not irritate me the way other, more wildly inaccurate, dance scenes do.

Kentucky Reel

Earlier this month I saw and greatly enjoyed Love and Friendship, the adaptation of Jane Austen's short epistolatory novel Lady Susan.  There's not actually a dance scene in the original story, but they squeezed a brief one into the film.  I'll defer full commentary on the scene until I can get the DVD and watch it a couple more times, but the brief version is that it was an odd and, as far as I know, ahistorical variation of Sir Roger de Coverley in which partners stood alternately proper and improper, resulting in lines that alternated gentlemen and ladies and diagonals that involved two people of the same gender.  You can see it for about a second at 1:26 in the trailer here.  

While I'm waiting for the DVD release, I'll free-associate to another country, era, and dance.  I promise, this does have some connection to Love and Friendship!

Tracking the Mescolanzes

The topic of mescolanzes, four-facing-four country dances, and whether the famous dance La Tempête was the only surviving member of the genre by the mid- to late nineteenth century, came up in an email exchange recently.  Mescolanzes are one of those dance genres for which I have spent years slowly accumulating examples, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about the format and where dances called mescolanzes appeared over the course of the nineteenth century.

I'm going to limit this quick survey to more-or-less anglophone countries -- England, America, Scotland, Canada, and Australia -- since I've not yet collated all the information I have from other countries.  I'm also not going to discuss La Tempête specifically, since that is an enormous topic all on its own.  Here and now, I will only survey dances appearing under the name or classification "mescolanze" and its several (mis)spellings.

Twin Sisters (2 of 2)

As I noted in my previous post on Twin Sisters, which should be read before this one, I had no luck finding a tune called "Twin Sisters".  But there are two other names regularly associated with Twin Sisters: Land of Sweet Erin and The Merry Dance.  Searching for those produced some interesting results.

The Traditional Tune Archive states that "Land of Sweet Erin" is an old Irish jig with a variety of different titles, with the name "Land of Sweet Erin" unique to Elias Howe's books.  That is incorrect; the music was printed under that title in A Collection of Country Dances and Cotillions arranged for the pianoforte (Boston: G. Graupner, c1808-1811).  It includes a set of contra dance figures completely different from the Twin Sisters ones.  Per the extremely useful database Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1710-1830 (DFIA index), another set of figures, only slightly different from the Graupner ones, appear under that title in a c1800 manuscript of dance figures.  And the equally useful Early American Secular Music and Its 
European Sources, 1589–1839: An Index (EASMES) gives three New England music manuscript cites for the tune under that name, with the earliest being a 1795 manuscript from Connecticut.

Howe may have picked up both tune and title from the Graupner publication or, since the tune was apparently circulating under that name in New England, gotten them from another fiddler in his youth.  His first publication of "Land of Sweet Erin", with no dance figures attached, seems to have been in a trio of 1843 music instruction books (School for the Flute, School for the Clarionet, and School for the Violin).  It is included in the 1851 reprint of School for the Clarionet, again without figures, and in a music book published by Oliver Ditson & Company, The Home Circle (Boston, 1859) with a different set of contra dance figures.  The same figures reappear under the "Land of Sweet Erin" title (without music) in Schell's Prompting: How to do it (Boston, 1890).  And the tune turns up outside New England as well; in The Welcome Guest (New York, 1863), it is used, as "Land of Sweet Erin", for a quadrille figure.  I have not even tried to trace it under all its other possible names.

It is clear that "Land of Sweet Erin" was not exclusively attached to the Twin Sisters contra figures.  So how did they come to be linked together?  That seems somewhat more likely to have been Howe's doing.

More from Green Ginger!

A few months ago I noted that the UK dance band Green Ginger had begun making extended tracks of some of their country dance tunes so that they would have a repeat structure useful for historical sets and progressions, which require specific numbers of repeats for specific lengths of sets, as described in detail here.  Most notably, six or twelve repeats are useful for three- or four-couple sets.  Seven repeats, which I gather are frequently used for modern-style country dancing, are not useful for much of anything, historically speaking.  

Since I generally teach to recordings and therefore have a bottomless appetite for new music that I do not have to wrestle with music editing software to make useful, I am delighted to discover that they have continued the project, and have recently made some new tracks available.

I do not plan to make a habit of posting every time Green Ginger puts out something new, but I will create a "mothership" post here for their country dance tracks and update it as new music comes out.  

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.

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. 

Moving toward more historically accurate Regency dancing

There seems to be a mistaken impression that because setting your own figures is permitted in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century ("Regency") English country dancing, it must be required, and people who want to dance authentically need to stop using their favorite tunes and give up all their favorite figures in favor of learning to make them up on the spot.

That's not actually true.  Assuming you have good reconstructions, which admittedly is a rather large assumption given how many dreadful (in a historical sense) ones are floating around, it's perfectly possible to keep right on doing the same figures to the same tunes forever and be historically correct.  It's boring, and it's not displaying high-level ballroom skills for a dancer of the era (if you can consider "able to choose a different tune now and then" a suitable bar to clear to have "high-level ballroom skills"; it seems like a pretty low bar to me), but not incorrect.

What has to change is not what you do, but how you do it and how you think about it.

Incorrect:  "This dance is called [name].  Its figures are [figures]"

Correct:    "Here are the figures: [figures].  We're going to dance them to the tune [name]."

See what I did there?  You can do exactly the same figures to exactly the same tune.  Just...say it differently.  Think about it differently.  Understand the difference between a tune (music; the thing with a name) and dance figures (a selection from a limited repertoire of "glossary figures" put together in mostly-predictable ways).  

And when you internalize that mindset rather than the modern one, the varied world of historical Regency dancing opens up to you.

Long enough to dance to!

If one is not lucky enough to have musicians available for balls and classes, finding usable recordings of Regency country dances can be a bit of a challenge.  While there are quite a few CDs on the market billed as Regency or Jane Austen-era music, they are often made up mostly of music from other eras.  Even the ones that are actually suitable selections for the time period frequently include only a few country dances.  And it is, alas, very typical for those tunes to be recorded at the lengths used for modern English country dance: three to seven times through the music.  

Since historical country dancing needs the length of the music matched to the length of the set, and the lengths can be quite lengthy, most of these recordings are not very useful without substantial work with music editing software to add a substantial number of repeats.

So I am very happy to note that the UK band Green Ginger, whose album Music for Quadrilles is one of my very favorites for the Regency era, has very considerately offered for online purchase a set of extended-length versions of seven of the country dance tunes from their Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album, namely:

• "The Waterloo Dance" (12 x 24 Reel)
• "The College Hornpipe" (12 x 32 Hornpipe)
• "Cupid in Armour" (6 x 64 Waltz)
• "Bonaparte in a Knapsack" (12 × 32 Jig)
• "The Oldenburgh Bonnet" (12 × 32 Reel)
• "The Young Widow" (12 × 32 Jig)
• "Lord Dalkeith’s Reel" (12 × 24 Reel)

I'm especially excited that this batch includes "Waterloo", which is a tune I use regularly at balls but for which I have never had a good recording.  Along with "Lord Dalkeith's Reel", it is one of two twenty-four-bar arrangements in this set of tunes.  That length is fairly rare compared to the quantity of recordings made for thirty-two-bar dances.

Six of the seven tracks are twelve times through, which is the proper length for a four-couple set for a triple minor dance or a five-couple set for a duple minor one.  The last is a sixty-four-bar (!) waltz offered six times, which will work for a three-couple set either duple or triple minor.  It could also be thought of as thirty-two bars twelve times or used for a (very lengthy) waltz.

As usual for Green Ginger, the sound is rich and the instrumentation is lovely: fiddles and piano, mercifully free of out-of-period accordions.

The seven tracks are available for individual download only on the page for the Grand Waterloo Ball 2015 album.  They are at the very bottom of the list of download links.  Note that they are not included if you just buy the whole CD (online or otherwise).  You have to purchase them individually and separately.  The CD has only the shorter versions.

I'm hoping that Green Ginger will do long versions of other tunes from their current and future CDs, so I would like to encourage everyone who does Regency-era country dance to purchase these extended tracks for your own use and to demonstrate to the band that it is worth the trouble to make them.

Same-Gender Couples in the Regency Ballroom

One of the critical elements of serious dance history is cross-checking what the dancing masters says in dance manuals against the evidence we have -- if any -- of what people actually did.  Those two things aren't always the same.  Dancing masters generally explain what people ought to be doing, sometimes interspersed with lengthy complaints about what people are doing instead.  Both rules and complaints are useful guides, depending on whether one wants to strive to dance well and politely by period standards, or dance badly and rudely, as no doubt happened plenty in practice.  

But the very best evidence comes from the letters and diaries of people who actually lived in the relevant era.  Here's a great example of how a letter supports something that dancing masters wrote about in the Regency era: people of the same gender dancing together.

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.

A Group of Waltzers, 1817

One of the better-known dance illustrations from the Regency era is the 1817 "Group of Waltzers", an engraving by Jean Alexandre Allais (1792-1850) published in the February 1, 1817, issue of the ladies' magazine La Belle Assemblée.  At left is a black and white scan (click to enlarge).  A photograph of an uncolored original may be seen in the Digital Collections of the New York Public Library.  

There are also some beautiful individually-colored versions floating around the net, which were probably pulled out of actual issues of the magazine (ouch!)  A very nice one from the collection of author Louise Allen may be seen at the blog Jane Austen's London (scroll down), where it is mistakenly described as a picture of a waltz class, an error I have seen elsewhere as well.  I'm not sure how the "waltz class" idea got started, but let's look at what was actually said in the pages of the magazine about this particular engraving:

The festive season of Christmas ushered in that period when Terpsichore leads her light footed and youthful votaries to the gaily-lighted up dome; and Britain's daughters, unrivalled in accomplishments as in virtue and beauty, tread the mazes of the intricate dance to the sound of the melodious harp, the well-toned violin, and full martial band.  The season for dancing, thus joyfully commenced, is now in its prime, and we have not only presented our fair readers with the most elegant dress for such an occasion, but we have added a group of dancers as an embellishment to our present Number.
       --- from "General Observations on Fashion and Dress", La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817, p. 34

Weirdly, that little introduction is actually given after the description of the plate.  Someone wasn't thinking when they did the layouts!  

A ballroom brawl, 1804

Going beyond simple rudeness in the ballroom, here's a wonderful account of a French-American culture clash turned violent at a ball in New Orleans on January 23, 1804.  Aside from showing what people of that era would fight over and how hair-trigger tempers were in New Orleans in particular at that time, it also usefully documents some ballroom dance practices of the era.  Slowly piecing together such tidbits eventually allows me to draw larger conclusions.

I'm not going to explain the whole background of the Louisiana Purchase, which transferred an enormous swathe of North America from French to American control in 1803, but it is worth noting that the formal transfer of New Orleans itself took place on December 20, 1803, only a month or so before the incident described.  There is a suggestion earlier in the article that feelings were running high among the French in the wake of (perceived?) American disrespect during the replacement of the French flag with the American one.  There had already been a "slight misunderstanding" at a previous assembly on January 6th.  The fight on the 23rd is a small example of the sort of cultural conflicts that would be a problem in New Orleans society for decades afterward.

Tired of the company, 1789

I've recently been reminded by some discussions on a mailing list that there are plenty of people who don't really have much grasp of the social context of dance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century or that a ball could be a much more complicated and socially perilous event than just a bunch of folks getting together and having a nice time dancing.  

Here's an interesting example of rudeness on the dance floor wielded as a social weapon.

The Skills of Signior Squeak

A Gentleman of vast agility,
Who teaches capers and civility
And whose whole life consists of play days,
Informs the gentlemen and ladies
Of this good town and other places,
That he's Grand Master of the Graces --
Professor of the violin,
And hopes to suit them to a pin
In teaching arts and fascinations,
Dancing and other recreations;

When life is stressful I need a little bit of silliness, and where better to find it than in bad Regency verse full of double entendres?  "Other recreations" indeed!

Misery in perspective, 1806

It's always helpful to put one's problems in perspective.  It's downright amusing to watch a writer of 1806 put the minor woes of people of early-nineteenth-century England in perspective. 

James Bereford devotes an entire book to this theme in The Miseries of Human Life, a satirical work that still holds up rather well today. 

To quote the review which appeared in the Supplement to La Belle Assemblée, or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, for the Year 1806:

It is a raillery of those minor miseries, those petty disappointments, those minute obstructions of comfort which constitute the character of life, and occasion many to imagine themselves as superlatively miserable as those who are suffering under objects of more dignity and magnitude.

Perspective.  Right.

Immoral Italians: Waltzing, 1807

In October, 1807, a Boston magazine, The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, published a letter dated February 7, 1805, from an anonymous American traveller in Europe to his sister.  The letter was one of a series from the same traveller published by the Review.  Mostly, they are enthusiastic travelogues filled with descriptions of cities and antiquities.  But one letter was rather different, and makes an interesting companion piece to "Proper Dress for Cotillons", which was likewise published, a year or so later, in The Monthly Anthology.

-------------------------------------------

Entitled "Morals of Italy. -- The Waltz", the tenth letter contains the writer's "observations on the state of morals and manners in Italy."  He admitted first that it was not really fair for a traveler make judgments about any foreign society:

I would observe, that I think it extremely unfair in a traveller, who visits a foreign country, to whose language he is in a considerable degree a stranger, into whose society he can only have a limited and partial admission to draw general and illiberal inferences as to the state of their morals, and the nature of their domestick relations.  The very illiberal representations which we have seen made of the manners of our own country by Chastellux, Weld, Parkinson, Liancourt, Bayard, and that execrable German, whose travels were republished in the Port Folio, ought to lead us to be very cautious how we venture upon general descriptions, especially unfavourable ones, of foreign nations.

Naturally, he wasn't about to let any such concerns stop him from so reporting on Italy:

But although general comments on national manners are, for the reasons I have assigned, improper, unjust, and illiberal, still there are certain leading traits, which he who runs may read, and which he may without risk report.

Getting Savage!

When I watched the BBC's general excellent documentary Pride & Prejudice: Having a Ball last year, one of the things that caught my negative attention was this rather astonishing assertion at about the 1:07 mark:

"The Savage Dance was a craze back in 1813, taken from a song-and-dance routine in a musical based on Robinson Crusoe."

Um...really?

Let me note first that this assertion was not made by the documentary's dancing master, but by a narrator.  That's a good thing, because I can give the narrator a pass on the assumption that she doesn't actually know anything about early nineteenth century dance.  It's a shame the BBC let this statement slide in, though, since as far as I can tell it is, shall we say, completely unsupported by any actual evidence.  I expect BBC documentaries to have higher standards than Hollywood movies.

Let's take that statement apart.

CD Review: Dance and Danceability

Getting useable music for Regency-era dancing is a chronically frustrating problem, and there are very few albums I can recommend wholeheartedly.  Many of the recordings advertised as "Regency" or "Jane Austen" suffer from a weirdly expansive idea of "Regency era" that goes back to the 17th century or forward to the 20th.  Almost all have an incorrect number of repeats of the music for period dancing, which matches repeats to set length in a specific way that does not accord with modern recording habits.

Dance and Danceability is an Austen-themed album of country dance tunes from the Scottish dance band The Assembly Players (Nicolas Broadbridge, Aidan Broadbridge, and Brian Prentice).  Aidan Broadbridge is a name that may be especially recognizable to Austen enthusiasts -- he was the fiddler for the 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice as well as the fictionalized pseudo-biopic Becoming Jane (2007).

Sadly, this is one of the frustrating CDs.

Frolicking at Frogmore, 1800

Frogmore House, Windsor Great Park
© Copyright Gill Hicks and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Mentions of dance in men's magazines are somewhat rarer than in women's, but in 1800, The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle twice briefly mentioned country dancing by the royal family at Frogmore, a royal country estate in Berkshire that is best known today as the burial place of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  Frogmore House (left; click to enlarge) was built in the late seventeenth century and purchased by (or for) the queen in 1792.  It was updated by the architect James Wyatt during the early 1790s; among his improvements was the front Colonnade, which in 1800 was open to the gardens.

In 1800 the royal family consisted of George III, Queen Charlotte, and their thirteen surviving children, most of whom were unmarried and still lived with their notoriously strict parents.  Their oldest son, the future George IV, would become best known to history as the Prince Regent from 1810-1820.  Their second son, Prince Frederick, and his wife, Princess Frederica, held the titles of Duke and Duchess of York. 

Among their guests was the exiled William V, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, and a refugee from the spillover of the French Revolution.

Their third-oldest daughter, the Princess Elizabeth (right, in 1797), who would turn thirty in the May of 1800, seems to have served as organizer and hostess for her parents in the events at Frogmore.  While there is no detailed description of the dancing, there are some intriguing tidbits of information in the description of the first event and appearances by noted performers of the era in the entertainment preceding the ball in the second.

Proper dress for cotillons, Boston, 1808

This short satire is really a commentary on early nineteenth-century fashion.  My excuse for posting it here is that it pertains to dance history by making it clear that cotillons were still sufficiently fashionable in Boston in 1808 as to allow them to be part of a bilingual joke. 

Also, it's funny, and I like it, and I'm feeling self-indulgent this month.

The excerpt below is taken from The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, Vol. V, 1808.  It is found in the December section under a column called "Silva", which seems to be a sort of literary miscellanea with a title shortened from a supposed Cicero quote starting "silvia rerum" (forest of things).  "Cotillons" starts on page 657.  I will include it in its entirety below with a short explanation for anyone who doesn't get the joke.

COTILLONS

The Cotillon, or under-petticoat dance, received its name from that garment, which, to the exclusion of others was appropriated to its use.  It is painful to observe that the ladies of Boston, are so far backward in the ranks of fashion, that, on those days of battle array, when they are drawn up to near and warm engagements, they have not yet ventured to assume their uniform.  Is there no one of sufficient publick spirit to stand forward, and, like Ulysses, throwing off her useless rags, assume the majesty and simplicity of the Cotillon.  An objection, indeed, may be raised, that, provided the external finery be removed, the expected substitute would not appear : that fashion has long since deprived a lady's person of that useless incumbrance.  Without pretending to enter into the merits of this objection, or to decide, whether the garment, next but one to the skin, whatever be its quality and texture, be not the one in question, we would, with all humility, beg leave to inquire, whether Mrs. Cruft, and Miss Brown, and Mrs. _____, and Miss _____, &c. ad infinitum, are not sufficient to supply any demand, which this town and its vicinity can create.  Away with such frivolous evasions.