Capering & Kickery

Elite Lanciers (3 of 3)

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

The fourth figure as given in Link:

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

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

Elite Lanciers (2 of 3)

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

The second figure as given in Link:

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

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

Rye, just Rye

Moving right along with late nineteenth-century variations from the usual pair of M. B. Gilbert (Round Dancing, Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp (La Danse, Paris, 1903), here's a short one that's classified as a redowa or mazurka.  Lopp attributed La Rye to Gilbert, who had previously printed it in his own work without attribution.  Gilbert did not ever credit himself specifically in his own book, unfortunately, which makes it difficult to be absolutely certain of the attribution.

The name of the variation suggests that it was meant to be danced to a musical setting of the famous Robert Burns poem, "Comin' Thro' the Rye", which was set in both waltz and schottische rhythms (including both alternately in the Rye Waltz, a sequence dance dating back to at least the 1890s).  The waltz version of the tune, which may be heard on this YouTube video, is not accented like a redowa or mazurka and does not offer especially good musical support to this sequence of steps.  There may have been a version published with a more mazurka- or redowa-like style, but I haven't been able to locate one.  Skilled musicians might also be able to tweak it musically on the fly.  It's also possible that there was a completely different tune called "The Rye", but I actually find this less likely, as the word was so strongly associated with a particular tune.  There was a 1922 novelty dance ("The New Rye Dance") published which combined a "redowa, Rye movement, and waltz" using "Comin' Thro' the Rye", but that's much too late to mean anything more than that people really liked adapting "Comin' Thro' the Rye" for dancing. 

In the absence of adventurous musicians or a mazurka/redowa-accented recording of "Comin' Thro' the Rye", I'd not really recommend that piece for these steps.  They work much better with an appropriate polka mazurka or redowa tune.  For tempo, Lopp offered his typical  recommendation of 144 beats per minute, which works quite well and matches Gilbert's overall recommendation for  redowa/mazurka.

Wayside Gavotte

Just to be thorough, here's a quick reconstruction of the Wayside Gavotte I mentioned in my previous post on the Stephanie Gavotte.  This is another short couple dance sequence, but unlike M. B. Gilbert's Stephanie Gavotte, it moves normally along line of dance throughout and loosely follows a "doubled" schottische pattern with four bars of forward travel and four bars (more-or-less) of turning.  Though it is meant to be danced to "Stéphanie-Gavotte", there is no reason it can't be danced to other schottische music.

Per Gilbert Dances, Vol. II (1913, Susan Hoffman Gilman, ed.), the Wayside Gavotte was choreographed by Helen C. Way, whom I presume to have been a student of Gilbert's.  It is undated, and since, according to the biography in Gilbert Dances, Vol. I, Gilbert was teaching until his death, it could be from as late as the beginning of 1910.  The use of the waltz-galop step feels to me more reminiscent of the schottische sequences of the 1880s-1890s, however, so I suspect it is from closer to 1900.

Stephanie Gavotte

The Stephanie Gavotte is a short (eight-bar) schottische/gavotte sequence which George Washington Lopp, in La Danse (Paris, 1903), attributed to M. B. Gilbert.  It had previously appeared in Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) without any specific attribution.  

The sequence was almost certainly created for the popular "Stéphanie-Gavotte", op. 312 of Austro-Hungarian composer Alphons Czibulka (1842-1894).  The piece was composed in 1880 in honor of the engagement of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, to Princess Stéphanie of Belgium and apparently became enormously popular.  It's quite easy to find the sheet music; the Library of Congress alone has eighteen copies of it online, including this 1885 edition, from which the image at left was taken.  Performances and recordings of it are likewise easy to find; here's a nice one by the Belgian orchestra Brabelio:

Three Tiny Galop Variations

Wrapping up my impromptu miniseries of posts on galop variations found in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), here's a trio of galop variations which I don't feel warrant sufficient time or analysis for individual posts:

• Two of the three are short "do something, then some galop" sequences; the other is even shorter and rather dull
• None of them are very challenging to perform, and two have repeated leaps from a complete stop, which, as a dancer, I don't really enjoy. 
• None of them have any conflicts between sources. 
• One has a reconstruction problem, but it's minor and easily resolved. 
• I fully expect that all of them have matching sheet music and that the names of the variations are actually the names of the tunes to which they were choreographed, but I haven't been able to locate any of it, and none of them are sufficiently attractive to inspire me to spend much time searching.

So, in the interest of efficiency, here's the trio together with brief notes about each.

The Gaiety (La Gaité)

This is turning into a miniseries of galop variation posts.  Moving right along, the Gaiety is another one found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  The dance was attributed to George T. Wilson by Gilbert and plain George Wilson by Lopp.  I'm familiar with books by George E. Wilson, but not George T. Wilson.  The "T" might be a typo, but I don't think it is.  George E. published rather standard manuals from New York.  The two I have looked at (one that I own, one at the New York Public Library) do not include the Gaiety, and are so pedestrian and derivative that I think it unlikely that he created something as, ah, non-pedestrian as the racket-like Gaiety.  And Gilbert listed George T. as living in Maine.  Possibly the reason they both used their middle initials was to avoid confusion!

Gilbert noted that the Gaiety was accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, on September 4th, 1889.

Allowing for translation issues, the two descriptions are almost identical in wording, and the reconstruction is mostly straightforward.  For the steps given below, the gentleman begins on the left foot and the lady on the right.  The starting position is a normal closed ballroom hold, starting either with the gentleman facing more-or-less along line of dance (if dancing diagonally, which is my preferred reconstruction) or with his back to the center if one is attempting to turn the Gaiety.  See the notes below for more about this issue.

The Puritan Waltz (La Puritan Galop)

The Puritan Waltz is not, actually, a waltz.  It's a galop variation found in both Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903).  Gilbert described it under the name The Puritan Waltz and also referenced it under The Jubilee.  Lopp chose truth in advertising over adherence to the original and went with La Puritan Galop.  The two descriptions match perfectly in the practical aspects, though Gilbert gets a little more poetic in naming the parts of the dance after...a whaling expedition?  I feel like there must be some story behind a dance with parts called "The Calm", "The Fluke", and "The Gale", but I've no idea what it might be.  Nantucket Puritans?

With a title like that, the first question that comes to mind is whether it's mis-listed or mis-described and really meant to be a waltz.  It's not; the sheet music by George Fox (cover image at left; click to enlarge) is online at the Library of Congress, complete with dance instructions that are nearly a word-for-word match with Gilbert.  It's nice to have an outside source for a Gilbert/Lopp-published dance; it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.

Per the sheet music, the dance is by E. Woodworth Masters, was published in 1885, and was accepted by the National Association of Teachers of Dancing.  Gilbert and Lopp both duly credit Masters.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The College Step

Working my way through the waltz variations in Round Dancing (M. B. Gilbert, Portland, Maine, 1890) and La Danse (G. W. Lopp, Paris, 1903), here's one that can fairly confidently be classified as a step rather than a sequence written for a particular piece of music.  It's actually quite interesting, though less for the step than for the fact that though at first glance it looks like a two-part sequence, it's actually not.  Gilbert specifically (and ungrammatically) wrote:

Repeat ad lib, commencing at the second part.  At the termination of the side movement.  Waltz at pleasure, introducing the second part at will.  

In other words, waltz (the first part) for as long as you like, then do the second part (a set of sideways movements akin to a racket) for as long as you like.  In short, use the second part as a variation in your waltzing.  That's in line with how I suspect many of these variations were actually used, but it's unusual to see it stated so explicitly.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: The Eugénie

The Eugénie, or Eugenie-Trot, is yet another of the many variations published in M. B. Gilbert's book of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later, in translation to French, in G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It was attributed by both authors to St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler, as is confirmed by the cover of the sheet music shown at left (click to enlarge).  I would not regard it as a particularly important or significant variation; it warrants a reconstruction only as part of my overall progress through every dance in those two books.

The Eugénie begins in the "military" position (described at length, with a photo, here) with the dancers opened up side by side, the gentleman's right arm around the lady's waist and her left hand resting on his shoulder or upper arm, depending on their relative heights.  The gentleman starts with the left foot and the lady with the right.  The gentleman's steps are given; the lady dances opposite.

Reconstruction (eight measures of waltz)
4b   Leap forward onto left foot (1), pause (2), and close right to fifth position behind (3)
       Repeat three more times with the same foot; the fourth time, the gentleman swings in front of the lady to put his back to line of dance and take closed position

4b   Waltz two complete turns, opening up at the end to restart

Not very exciting, eh? I personally prefer the extremely similar Military Waltz (described here), which uses a leap-pause-hop/point instead of a leap-pause-close and alternates feet rather than this lame-duck-like repetition four times with the same foot.  The Eugénie is really nothing but a less-pleasing variation.

Military Times

Military Times is one of the many, many, many little couple dance variations included in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903) but not, so far as I can tell, to be found in any other period source.  I'd mentioned it (negatively) in passing many years ago when I wrote about the other "military position" variations in Gilbert, but hadn't ever published a reconstruction.  In the interest of being thorough, and since I feel more positively about it now than I did eleven years ago, here it is!

Military Times is attributed by Gilbert to Ralph Warren of Denver, Colorado.  Like the other dances with "military" in their names, Military Times begins with the dancers side by side, the lady on the right, the gentleman's right arm around the lady's waist and her left hand resting on his shoulder or upper arm.  Their free arms can hold a gentle curve at their sides, or (French style), her hand can hold her skirt while his rests at his waist, palm out.  Unlike those other "military" dances, however, Military Times has both dancers beginning on the same foot, the left.  The reconstruction of the dance is fairly straightforward, though some performance details have to be filled in, given the brief (Gilbert) and confusing (Lopp) descriptions available.

A quick summary of the dance is that the dancers perform four measures of gentle skipping steps followed by the lady doing two full turns of reverse waltz while holding right hands with the gentleman, who travels along with her.  This is an unusual example of an underarm turn in the nineteenth century.

The Kosmos Club's Ball, 1895

Image courtesy of The New York Times

One hundred and twenty-four years ago today, Brooklyn's Kosmos Club planned a Valentine's-eve costume ball, which was written up in the society column of The New York Times on February 12, 1895. As is often the case, there's no description of the social dance program, but there are some interesting tidbits about the overall ball format.

First, a bit about the folks putting on the ball.  The Kosmos Club was a women's club, part of a general social movement towards clubs of all kinds during the late nineteenth century.  According to the 1904 edition of the directory Club Women of New York, it was founded in 1894 with the following mission statement:

"The object of this club shall be to form a nucleus for intellectual, social, patriotic, and philanthropic development."

Further details in the listing include the meeting schedule and that the club membership was one hundred.  Club Women of New York was, literally, a listing of women who were members of New York City clubs, and Kosmos Club membership appears next to dozens of names.

The location of the ball was the (men-only) Union League Club of Brooklyn, shown above left (click to enlarge).  A dramatic building, complete with turret, it was relatively new at the time, having been built only in 1890.  According to The New York Times, the club itself was founded in the 1860s to support the Union cause during the Civil War.  More about the club and its then building may be found at The Times, here. The building, sadly stripped of its turret, still exists today; a photo is at the preceding link.  The Union League itself is long gone, however; according to the site Brownstoner, the building was taken over by The Unity Club, a Jewish organization, in 1914, and remained in their hands until they bought a different building in 1944. 

"Diamond" Reel of Six

This is an interesting little reel for two gentlemen and four ladies which I would consider reasonable for anywhere from the late 1820s to, at least in Scotland, the 1870s or even later.  I'm hesitant to date it too specifically since neither of the sources I have are precisely dated, and while one is at best late 1820s and the other well into the mid-nineteenth century, this reel is perfectly compatible with Regency style.  Unless I were in a particularly strict-constructionist mood, I wouldn't blink an eye to see it performed at a Regency event.

I have only two sources for this Reel of Six: Lowe's Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, third edition (Edinburgh, c1830) and The Excelsior Manual of Dancing, by J. F. Wallace (Glasgow, c1875).  The dating on The Excelsior Manual is especially fuzzy.  The dances could be from as early as c1860, but the illustrations of the ladies dresses suggest the early 1870s to me.  In Traditional Dancing in Scotland, J. P. and T. M. Flett list it as c1872.  A later edition of The Excelsior Manual (datable from its contents to no earlier than the mid-1890s and listed by the Fletts as c1900) does not include this Reel of Six.  Nor have I found it in any other Scottish dance manuals of the nineteenth century, though my collection of those is thin enough that I wouldn't take that as a definitive statement about it having never appeared elsewhere.

Unlike most reels for six dancers, this reel is in "diamond" formation, like a Reel of Five.  The four ladies are at the four points of an imaginary diamond with the two gentlemen back to back in the center, and the reels are reels for four dancers rather than for three.  

In complexity, this Reel of Six falls somewhere between the simpler Reels of Five and the very elaborate one created by Regency London dancing master Thomas Wilson, which I described here.  There is no added circling or passing under arms, but it does include the fast cross by the outside dancers between the heying (reeling) dancers.  This is actually easier to pace with six dancers rather than five.  Other than that little detail, it consists of a standard alternation of heying (reeling) and setting, tweaked to accommodate the two extra ladies.  But unlike Wilson's choreographed reels, the sources for this one are impeccably Scottish.

CD Review: The Grand Victorian Ballroom

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

The Grand Victorian Ballroom: Waltzes, Quadrilles, Contras, Polkas, and Other 19th Century Dance Music (Gaslantern Records, 2012), with its accompanying sheet music, is the second of two CDs I received for my birthday earlier this year, along with North & South.  But unlike North & South, this album was designed for dancing, so it is both beautifully played for listening pleasure and entirely functional as dance music.  The musicians, once again, are the members of the Orchestra of the Gilded Age (I still don't know exactly who those members are) conducted by Jeffrey Hunter.

As with North & South, there are no liner notes included with the disc, but the Gaslantern website has all the details of sources, composers, dates, etc.  All of the tunes except the two contra dances are dated between 1850 and 1870, perfect for a mid-century or American Civil War-themed ball.  The contras are also quite appropriate; though their tunes are older, they were still popular and attached to common dances in this era. 

While the focus is on American composers, the album includes the two quadrilles with European connections: the Prince Imperial Quadrille (French, but popular in America) and a Lancers set adapted from Jacques Offenbach's opera, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein.

My immediate advice: if you enjoy mid-nineteenth-century dancing, proceed directly to Gaslantern's website to order this CD.  It's not available digitally; you have to buy the actual disc.  The sheet music can be ordered in either physical or PDF format and includes dance notes for the quadrilles and contras. 

If you want more information first, a track-by-track breakdown is below.  

Balls at Portsmouth, 1865

Late in the summer of 1865, the French and British navies exchanged formal visits, with a British fleet visit to Cherbourg followed by a reciprocal French visit to Portsmouth.  In the latter town, two balls were held, both documented in engravings and written coverage by, among others, the Illustrated London News.  The image at left (click to enlarge) illustrates the ball held on Thursday, August 31st, 1865, in a "grand pavilion erected for the entertainments on Governor’s Green."  ("Illustrations of the Naval Festival at Portsmouth." Illustrated London News (London, England), Issue 1333, Saturday, September 9, 1865).  More detailed coverage a week later explained that the ball was held in

one of Edgington’s tents, 138 ft. long and 36 ft. wide, floored over, and lined with crimson and white cloth, also decorated with flags and coloured lamps.  At the upper end, behind the Mayor’s chair, was a bust of the Emperor Napoleon, above a shield bearing the arms of the town of Portsmouth, with the Mayor’s chain and badge.  On his right hand were the Royal arms of Great Britain, supported by the standards of France, with the Imperial and British crowns.  On his left hand were the arms of France, supported by the Royal standards of England and of the Prince of Wales.  At the opposite end of the room were an exquisitely-designed waterfall, fountain, and cascade, intermixed with choice ferns and evergreens — the rockwork before formed of blocks of coal, gilt...The company numbered about 2000 ladies and gentlemen, and the great majority of the latter wore naval or military uniforms, while the ladies, of course, were very richly and gaily dressed.  They presented, while dancing, a splendid as well as a lively and animated sight.
    -- "Illustrations of the Anglo-French Naval Festival at Portsmouth."  Illustrated London News (London, England), Issue 1334, Saturday, September 16, 1865.

Dance Program: Elmer Fife's Grand Ball, 1886

I don't actually own this dance card; it escaped me on ebay some time ago.  But I managed to grab the helpfully-posted images before they vanished.  It is not a very prepossessing card; it appears to be a simple folded piece of cardstock with black and white printing inside and out.  The inside of the card is at left.  The outside, below, features a simple but attractive front cover design of geometric shapes surrounding a bird in a lightly-sketched landscape.

What makes this card interesting to me is that it is not really a dance card for use at an actual ball.  Notice how there are no spaces to fill in partners' names?  Enlarge the inside of the card and in the fine print you'll see "We respectfully solicit your company for the above occasion", said occasion being a "Grand Ball!" to be given by Elmer Fife at Moore's Hall on Wednesday, January 27th, 1886.  The card is actually an invitation, or possibly an advertisement, depending on how it was distributed.  The final line on the left, "None but respected parties will be admitted to the ball" hints to me that it was not a very exclusive list.  And I am amused by the larger-font assurance that there will be "GOOD MUSIC".  Overall, this card reminds me most of the 1917 Ocean View Amusement Park card I posted several years ago.

Le Moulinet du Pas-de-Quatre

Like the Quadrille du Pas de Quatre, le Moulinet du Pas de Quatre is an experiment by French dancing master and author Eugène Giraudet in adapting the standard Pas de Quatre (a version of the schottische popular in Europe in the late nineteenth century) for small sets of dancers.

The Moulinet is a simple sequence dance, alternating between a short figure for two couples (done to schottische music) and waltzing. It involves only half of the standard Pas de Quatre step-sequence, which makes it a gentle and accessible introduction to the schottische for those new to the dance.

Unusually, we know not only the originator of the Moulinet but precisely when it was created: on March 10, 1897.  Giraudet wrote in a later edition of his Traité de la danse (Paris, c1900) that it was

Créée le 10 mars 1897, pendant une récréation de leçon, avec le concours de MM. et Mlles Mourets, ses élèves, qui ont aidé le maître, par leur gracieux dévouement et leur lumière élégante, ce qui a fait de cette danse la plus belle création du siècle et du maître.

My translation:

Created on 10 March, 1897, during a break in a lesson, with the cooperation of the Monsieurs and Mademoiselles Mourets, his pupils, who have helped the master by their graceful devotion and their elegant light, which have made of this dance the most beautiful creation of the century and of the master.

Giraudet also offered his "sincères hommages" to these pupils, from which I would construe that he had as much interest in the family’s continued patronage as in the quality of the dance.  "The most beautiful creation of the century and of the master" is a vast, vast exaggeration.

Was it actually danced after that one lesson?
It’s hard to say how popular any dance like the Moulinet became outside its creator’s own studio, but Giraudet certainly made an effort to promote it over the years. In the July of 1903, the Société internationale des maîtres choréographes held a congress in Westphalie. Giraudet, as president of the Société, was heavily involved, and when the dancing masters had finished making speeches bashing the “grotesque et ridicule” cakewalk and generally lamenting the state of the modern ballroom, they settled on seven more respectable dances to accept for the 1903 season. Fourth of these was the Moulinet. This backward-looking decree was reported with varying degrees of sarcasm in Parisian journals such as Le Temps and Figaro.

Nonetheless, the Moulinet seems to have achieved enough fame, at least in some circles, to be mentioned in a series of jokes about dance in late 1905:

Le Moulinet du Pas de Quatre aura pour prélude le Pas de Trois; celle-ci, sera dit-on, réservée aux mathématiciens.

My translation:

The Moulinet du Pas de Quatre [four] will have for its prelude the Pas de Trois [three]; this one, it will be said, reserved for mathematicians.

And in early 1907, the Moulinet appeared in a list of dances “en vogue” in les salons (as opposed to among “la société c’est-à-dire (la bourgeoisie) et le peuple”).

On to the practical details.

A Fancy Dress Ball, Saratoga, 1847

Another costume-heavy description of a fancy dress ball was published in The New York Herald on August 17, 1847, in the social column "The Watering Places" on page two.  The ball was held at Congress Hall of the United States Hotel in the summer resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York, on August 14, 1847.

Sadly, no information is given about the dancing, though the writer does mention the generous size of the hall, one hundred and fifty by fifty feet, and the beautiful decorations, featuring flowers and greenery plus "miniature flags of every nation which supports a navy" hanging "just above the heads" of the dancers.

The ball was popular, but some who had recently arrived in Saratoga were unable to attend because they could not get costumes ready in time:

Among the company at Saratoga, which is the best in America, there seemed to be a general interest in this event; there were few who, if time could have been had to make suitable preparations, would not have attended that ball.  Many persons who have lately arrived did not know that such a ball was to be given until it was too late for them to prepare for it.

The "resident visitors", presumably meaning those who spent the entire summer in Saratoga, had more warning and were able to spend considerable sums on costumes:

But there were no impediments to the ardor with which the resident visitors looked forward to this carnival, as something which would be more brilliant and extraordinary than any previous party; sums which some could not lose without becoming a beggar, were expended for jewels and dresses to be worn upon this occasion, and in procuring these articles, there was all that furor and agitation and hubbub which is characteristic of the American exclusives.

The writer of the column listed quite a few costumes, though he or she noted that there were "hundreds of characters" that he or she did not include.  Most of those listed are men's outfits; for any gentlemen looking for fancy dress ideas, this is a great list:

Harvard Caprice

The Harvard Caprice was created by dancing master Melvin Ballou (M. B.) Gilbert of Portland, Maine, matching the music of the same name by Albert L. Ryser.  I don't know whether the dance was created for the music or the music commissioned to match the dance, but the earliest publication of the sheet music that I have (cover shown at left; click to enlarge) is part of a series specifically for Gilbert's dances.  This was not the only Harvard-themed dance created by Gilbert; two years later, he went on to create the Harvard Dip.

The Harvard Caprice can be dated precisely both by the sheet music (1896) and its being mentioned in newspaper articles late in 1896 as one of the dances for the upcoming season: "Five new dances will be introduced this fall and winter.  They are the Landler, Harvard Caprice, the waltz two-step, La Zarina, and a modification of the old Varsouviana...The Harvard Caprice is also danced to four-four time, and is slightly akin to the old-fashioned schottische."  ("Saturday Social Review", Indianapolis News. Indianapolis, Indiana. September 19, 1896. p. 5.)

The sheet music advertises the dance as adopted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, as was reported with some cynicism by the Los Angeles Herald on November 15, 1896, under a series of subtitles including "ORIGINALITY A SCARCITY", "Why New Creations in the Art Generally Fail", and "The American Association of Professors Convened and Added Many Tributes to Terpsichore":

NEW YORK, Oct. 30. — Every year a number of agile and graceful gentlemen composing the American Association of Professors of Dancing come together, and, after deep thought and considerable wrangling, of course, in a most polite way, decide what the fashionable dances will be for the coming year.  Each of these gentlemen is an inventor of the terpsichorean order, and he attends the conclave with elaborately drawn diagrams of the dance with which he expects to convulse society later on.

In nine cases out of ten this dance is never heard of again, although it may receive the richest possible indorsement [sic] of the American Association of the Professors of Dancing.  The fault is not with the Association.  The members certainly recognize a graceful dance wen they see it; the trouble lies with the public.

The association has just had its annual meeting for 1896 and some terpsichorean wonders are ready to be thrust upon the dancing public.  The official titles of these wonders are: The Harvard Caprice, the X-ray Lanciers, the Hanover Quadrille, the Esprit d’Amerique, the Waltz Two-Step, and La Czarina.  It will be a matter of interest for those who pay attention to such things to memorize these titles and then observe how popular they become during the approaching winter season.  

Ada Rehan Waltz

The Ada Rehan Waltz is a simple and graceful hesitation waltz sequence published in Frank H. Norman's Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914), where it is attributed to John Hackett of Hamilton, Ontario.  It is named for the famous Irish-American actress, shown at left in a famous 1895 portrait by John Singer Sargent (click to enlarge).  Quite a few photographs from her theatrical career may be found in the New York Public Library's digital collection.  By 1914 she had long retired from the stage, and I doubt she had any personal or professional connection to this dance.  

Edited 6/6/2019 to add: As recorded in The Director, Volume I, No. 8 (September 1898): a dance called "Ada Rehan" was adopted as one of three new dances by the Western Association Normal School, a meeting of dance teachers which took place that year in Toledo, Ohio, for two weeks starting on June 14th, 1898.  Among the officers of the Association were John Hackett, Second Vice President.  While I have not yet found definitive proof, I think it quite likely that the "Ada Rehan" adopted there was Hackett's "Ada Rehan Waltz" published by Norman sixteen years later.  Rehan was at the height of her fame in the 1890s, so it makes considerably more sense to have a dance named after her in 1898 than in 1914.  And the style of the dance is very much that of the sequence dances of the 1890s-1900s, as noted below.  [end added material]

The starting position for the Ada Rehan Waltz has the gentleman and lady facing each other, his back to the center of the room, both hands joined, and arms extended.  The gentleman starts with the left foot and the lady with the right.  His steps are given below; the lady dances opposite.  The dance follows the classic sequence dance pattern of "go this way, go that way, waltz", similar to the Berlin, the Veleta, the Rye Waltz, and many, many, many other sequence dances.

Cross Step Polka

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

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

Pretty easily, it turns out!  

A L'Avenir

The five-step schottische was not E. Woodworth Masters' only choreographic effort.  

Interestingly, considering its American origin, I first ran across A L'Avenir in the pages of Dancing, a London periodical similar to The Director, Galop, The Two-Step, and other efforts by dancing masters to establish dance journals.  In the December, 1892, issue, the editor notes that the November issue of their "transatlantic contemporary" included the editor's version of the "Waltz Menuet" and that (therefore?) they include in this issue instructions for a new American dance, "L'Avenir", by "Mr. W. Masters, of Boston, United States".  The editor in question was probably R. M. Crompton, creator of one of several late nineteenth-century "waltz minuets".  

I located the sheet music (left; click to enlarge) in the online collection of Goucher College.  It does not have the dance instructions, but it includes some useful background information:

• The music seems also to have been composed by Masters; no one else is credited.
• A L'Avenir (the full name) was adopted by the American National Association of Teachers of Dancing at their convention in Washington, D.C., held from June 10-13, 1890.
• The sheet music is copyright 1891.

A L'Avenir is described as "A New Round Dance, Combination of Dance Movements".  It certainly is that.  The name means "for the future" or "henceforth", which raises the terrifying possibility that this is what Masters thought dancing would or should look like in the future.  The hodgepodge of movements he created is interesting, at least: a twenty-four-bar sequence in schottische (4/4) time.  Twenty-four bars is an unusual length for a sequence dance, but a quick check of the music reveals that it consists of twelve eight-bar strains, with the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth all being the same.  So the dance done four times through would match the sheet music nicely.

Here's how to do it:

Imperial Gavotte

The Imperial Gavotte is one of the many schottische variations included in M. B. Gilbert's book of couple dances, Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and in G. W. Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  It is attributed to Professor A. T. Graves of Albany, New York, and noted by Gilbert to have been accepted by the American Society of Professors of Dancing in New York on September 4, 1889.  The Society endorsement gave it enough exposure for it to turn up outside Graves' own studio: in the October 26, 1890, issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), it is listed as one of the new dances to be taught by John Mahler. 

American Gavotte / Polka Américaine

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

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

The Western Normal Newport

The Western Normal Newport was named after the Western Association Normal School Masters of Dancing, a professional organization for dancing masters in western North America.  "Normal school" sounds odd to modern ears, but historically, it didn't mean what we'd imagine today.  A normal school was a teacher-training school, where the "norms" of teaching and subject material were taught; more information on normal schools in general may be found here.  The Western Association Normal School was founded in 1894 under Canadian dancing master John Freeman Davis, its first president.

My only source for the Western Normal Newport is George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  Lopp was from the northwestern USA and may have been a member of the Normal School or at least aware of it.  The variation's name, as given in French by Lopp, was Le Western Normal Newport, attributed to l'Association de l'École normale des Maîtres de danse de l'Ouest.

Given that the school was founded in 1894, the Western Normal Newport was obviously created too late to appear in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing, published in Portland, Maine, in 1890, from which Lopp cribbed so much of his own book.

In my long-ago original post on the Newport, I noted that, like other nineteenth-century turning dances, it could be done turning to the right or left (natural or reverse turns, respectively) or along the line of dance without turning.  This variation makes the left and right turns quite explicit, mixing them with simple walking steps, the gentleman moving forward along the line of dance and the lady backward.  The variation takes eight bars of 3/4 music (see note below), and the reconstruction is very straightforward.  The gentleman's steps are given below; the lady dances opposite.  The overall scheme is three bars of right-turning Newport, three walking steps, three bars of left-turning Newport, and three more walking steps.

Ripple, Ripple, Jersey

The Ripple Galop and the Jersey are two galop variations found in both M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), a French translation of Gilbert with some additions and changes.  Both variations use the late nineteenth-century American waltz-galop technique of a leap along the line of dance followed by a side step and a cut (or close of the feet) in the rhythm "1&2" rather than the slide-chassé of the galop, extending it into the "Newport" pattern of a leap along the line of dance followed by a series of side-closes, stretching the basic step-unit from one to two measures.  The key difference is where the side steps and closes fall relative to the strong beats of the music:

galop:              1 (side)                   & (close)    2 (side)
waltz-galop:    1 (back/forward)    & (side)      2 (cut/close)

The galop pattern ends in an open position.  The waltz-galop normally does as well, but it can also be ended elegantly at the end of the music by a close of the feet rather than a cut.  This alteration of the relationship of movements to music in dances of the "new waltz" family is what makes these variations interesting to me.

Please see my original posts for a little more information about the waltz-galop (here) and the Newport (here).  

Mr. Layland's Polka Contre Danse

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

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

Until then, on with Polka Contre Danse!

Susan's Sociables

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Ladies leading, 1898

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about some of the tidbits of evidence of ladies or gentlemen dancing in same-gender couples in Regency-era ballrooms.  I'm returning to the topic of same-gender dancing with an interesting article I discovered in an issue of a late-nineteenth-century American dance magazine, The Two Step, published at the time by dancing master and author H. N. Grant, out of Buffalo, New York.  

The June, 1898, issue (Vol. 5, No. 47) includes a short essay on an important topic: "May a Lady Dance Backward."  It opens with a strong statement in favor:

Should a lady be taught to use the backward step in the waltz?

Yes we say, most emphatically yes.

That opens up all sorts of interesting questions, doesn't it?  Were ladies not generally even taught to waltz backward?  Was that actually controversial?

Apparently, it was not a problem in the anonymous author's school:

We have taught the ladies to retreat with the waltz step ad lib., for ten years or more, yet its excessive use is seldom ever seen in our establishment.  In all our experience, we have yet to find a lady who objects to dancing backward or a change.  They even ask for the practice.  

I've certainly seen it considered impolite for a gentleman to force a lady to go backward for any length of time, and the article does support that etiquette tip:

We are not advocating the fad of rushing the lady half way, or completely across, or around the hall in a backward position.  We know that this is done in some places and is entirely wrong.  All things become wrong when carried to excess.

But done in moderation, it should be quite acceptable:

Would it be an unpardonable breach of etiquette for the gentleman to occasionally allow his partner to make two or three retreating movements?  We hardly think so.

A fuss over ladies dancing backward would be generally amusing as a nineteenth-century tempest in a teapot, but it's the author's other argument for ladies learning to dance backward that really makes this essay noteworthy:

Prince Leopold's Birthday Ball, 1859

One of the most charming descriptions of a fancy dress ball in my collection is that of the event held at Buckingham Palace in honor of the sixth birthday of Queen Victoria's youngest son, Prince Leopold, on April 7, 1859.  This was a juvenile, or children's, ball, but, as we know from descriptions of the dancing lessons given to Victoria's children, the level of dancing skill even at young ages was considerably higher than one would expect from children today.  That said, it's not clear to me whether the youngest children really danced all the dances or whether that was left to the older ones, or perhaps the parents.

The description I have was printed in The Albion, A Journal of News, Politics and Literature, on April 30, 1859.  The Albion was a weekly New York newspaper that covered British matters extensively and was read by expatriates.  The description was probably copied directly from a London newspaper.

Tiptoeing through the terminology: an asymmetrical double glide waltz

When I discussed the Double Glide Waltz found in Melvin B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) a few years ago, I noted that there were other step sequences also called the Double Glide waltz.  One of those was a strange little sequence that I at first took for a badly-written description of a Metropole-like alternation of draw steps (slide...close) and waltz steps.  But on taking a closer look, it's a bit more complicated than that.  

I've found this particular Double Glide Waltz only the late nineteenth-century American collections Cartier's practical illustrated waltz instructor, ball room guide, and call book (New York, 1882) and Prof. M. J. Koncen's quadrille call book and ball room guide (St. Louis, 1883).  As a waltz variation, it is nice but not a particularly critical part of the repertoire of the period.  I suspect both descriptions were copied from some common source -- another manual, or perhaps a description on some sheet music -- with some modest editorial brushing-up.  What is interesting to me about these two descriptions is how they demonstrate just how much of a muddle dance terminology even relatively recent dance terminology can be, especially in late nineteenth-century compilation manuals like these that collect from a variety of sources and do not have the advantage of hindsight to divine what we nowadays consider to be standard usage.  

An Alternate Star Cotillion

Way back in the early days of Kickery, one of my first few posts was on the Star figure found in Thomas Wilson's Royal Scotch Quadrilles (published in footnotes of The Danciad, 1824) and described, minimally, in his Quadrille and Cotillion Panorama (1816), and how I found an echo of it in an American cotillion figure more than fifty years later.  I later published a practical description of how to use it as a cotillion (German) figure.  

At the time, influenced by my reconstruction of the Star figure in the Royal Scotch Quadrilles, I interpreted the cotillion figure as a different way of describing the same figure.  But I recently came across the same late Star figure again in a 1912 cotillion manual, and looking at it, I realized there was another way to interpret it.

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.

Revisiting the Flirtation Figure

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Red Domino Dance, 1898

An exciting fancy dress ball from the other side of the Atlantic was the "red domino dance" that took place in New York City on January 28, 1898, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Heber Bishop.

Heber Bishop (1840-1902) made himself a substantial fortune in Cuba, and the Bishops were well-known philanthropists and art collectors.  They also held some unusually-themed fancy dress balls which, as was typical at the time, made the society columns of various newspapers, both in New York City and elsewhere.  The column header at left is taken from the January 29, 1898, issue of The New York Times.  Happily, the paper of record devoted several column-inches to details of the red domino dance, which must have been visually stunning.  Unless otherwise noted, all quotes below are taken from the Times column, which may be found in PDF format in The New York Times online archive.

I have a general interest in fancy dress balls, but aside from my enjoyment of the colorful details of costumes and decorations, descriptions like this also offer bits of useful information about the organization of such a ball, which in this case included dancing, a late-night supper, and, in the small hours of the morning, a cotillion.

An 1880s Reel of Nine

I've been teaching various versions of the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century reel for nine called the Country Bumpkin for a number of years.  Jumping forward to the late nineteenth century, this reel for nine is clearly akin to the Bumpkin, though it's simply called "Reel of Nine" in David Anderson's The New, Enlarged, and Complete Ball-Room Guide, which was published in Dundee, Scotland, in the mid-1880s.  This is the only source I have for the dance.

The nine dancers required should have a two-thirds majority of either ladies or gentlemen; three of one and six of the other.  Anderson considered three gentlemen and six ladies to be the "more suitable" combination.  The formation is the "tic-tac-toe" formation of three rows of three dancers each, the odd gender in the center.  For purposes of this description, I'm going to default to the three gents/six ladies arrangement.  Here's what the set will look like:

L    G    L
L    G    L
L    G    L

The instructions are deceptively simple: reel for three across the set, set and turn both partners, reel at the corners while the other six dancers hands three around and back, set and turn both partners, and repeat all this "around the square", followed by a final hands eight around to the left while the center dancer sets.  All of this takes eight bars of music played seventeen times.  

Easy, right?

Actually, no.  While the individual figures are easy, making the whole thing work in practice is kind of tricky and turned out to require plenty of extrapolation and interpretation.

The Comus Waltz

Having brought up the Comus Waltz in the context of Tom Willson's 1888 dance card, and since it also appears on my own 1894 dance card, an interesting question is how exactly one dances it.

I have only two sets of instructions for it.  The earlier ones are found on the 1882 sheet music "Comus Waltz" by G. F. Dyke, and are attributed to Professor J. Patoille.  A second set is found in George Washington Lopp's book La Danse, which was published in Paris in 1903.  Lopp himself was an American expatriate who made a name for himself as a dance teacher in France before becoming embroiled in a messy scandal.  Lopp gives the author's name as Patrille, but Lopp makes a lot of minor errors like that.

The 1882 instructions are a bit of a mess.  Here's the text:

Slide left foot back to 4th position and place right foot in 2d position and draw to 3d position and repeat draw step.  Slide right foot to 4th position place left in 2d position draw to 3d position and repeat draw step. (2) then left foot back to 4th position and Waltz two steps. (2) then slide left foot to 4th position slide right foot to 2d position bringing left foot to 3d position same as Society step and repeat the Society with left foot. (2)

Ugh!  What to make of that?  

Dance Card: A Leap Year Ball, 1888

Continuing with my leap year theme, here's a dance card from an event held on Tuesday, January 2nd, 1888, by the Fedora Leap Year Club.  The scans of this card were sent to me by California dancer Tom Willson, who had a question about a couple of the dances on the program.  I couldn't give him a definite answer, but the card itself turned out to be surprisingly interesting.  Click the image at left of the outside of the card to enlarge it and take a close look at the text.

The event was the "First Grand Quadrille Social", though the dance mix is not particularly quadrille-heavy for the era -- seven out of the twenty dances, with the rest being a typical mix of other dances, which I will discuss below.  I haven't been able to trace the origin of the card; unfortunately, there are a number of Russell Halls in the United States, and with no city listed, I can't pick out which one.  Nor have I had any luck with the Fedora Leap Year Club.  Digging around on genealogy sites, here are some hints from some of the names of the organizers (Lizzie Spooner, Maggie Breazeale) that they might have been from somewhere in the south, but I can't say for certain where the ball occurred.  

But those names are the start of what is so interesting about this card: they're all female.  That's not that out of the ordinary for an organizing committee, but to have the floor managers be female?  That's pretty unusual.  As evidenced by the name of the club, this was in fact a leap year ball, run along the lines of the fictional ladies' ball described in the 1835 story I just discussed.  What a bizarre coincidence to have this card turn up just as I was preparing to write that post!

A Ballroom Repentance, 1882

Annie Edwardes' two-volume novel, A Ballroom Repentance (London: Richard Bentley & Sons. 1882), was apparently a somewhat racy novel by Victorian standards.  By today's, it falls into that dreary research category of deservedly-obscure novels that I plow through for the dance scenes.

Edwardes (c1830-1896) was an English author successful enough to publish twenty-one novels between 1858 and 1899, the last published posthumously.  Three were adapted for theatre.  I haven't read any of her other books, but the title of this one attracted me, since it promised a ballroom scene which might have include some useful tidbits of dance information.  The ballroom scene comes very near the end, but to be thorough, I read all seven hundred or so pages of what it would be fair to call Victorian soap opera.  It's a quick read with fewer words per page than a modern novel, so that wasn't quite as tedious as it sounds, but I can see why Edwardes has not come down to us as a major writer.  

A pithy contemporary review:

There is not much to be said of a Ball-Room Repentance; indeed, it would be almost enough to say that it is written in the present tense. When that monstrosity was committed because authors knew no better there was some excuse for it; but now that they have had fair warning, the repetition is simply contumacious. A Lake Leman boardinghouse, an American grass widow, a vulgar family of Continent haunters, a refined ditto, a weak-minded young Oxonian, an older person who is deluded by a brazen married woman with a conniving husband, Monte Carlo, Rome, &c, &c. —these are the well-worn ingredients of the book. That they are not mixed up without a certain cleverness is as much as saying that Mrs. Edwardes is the author; but the book makes us deplore more than ever that a narrative faculty so considerable should not have been able to associate with itself better taste, fresher materials, and more conscientious workmanship. There are touches, too, of occasional grandiloquence in this book with which Mrs. Edwardes has not always been chargeable. Here is a wonderful specimen: "The process of degeneration makes itself visible by no outward or visible sign in Roger Tryan. The poppy retains its surface-whiteness, the man approaches our ruined cousins the Ascidians by steps as yet imperceptible." Mrs. Edwardes might have abstained from reminding us so soon after Mr. Darwin's death of the sufferings which a great man sometimes unwittingly brings upon humanity by making persons who are not great talk nonsense.
                -- Saintsbury, George. “New Novels.” The Academy 532 (1882): 44.

On evening parties with dancing, 1860

The most fashionable as well as pleasant way in the present day to entertain guests is to invite them to evening parties, which vary in size from the "company," "sociable," "soiree," to the party, par excellence, which is but one step from the ball.

The entertainment upon such occasions may vary with the taste of the hostess or the caprice of her guests.  Some prefer dancing, some music, some conversations.  Small parties, called together for dramatical or poetical readings, are now fashionable, and very delightful.
        --- The Ladies' Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness

I first came across Florence Hartley's The Ladies' Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (G. G. Evans: Philadelphia, 1860) via the July, 1861, issue of Godey's Lady's Book, which excerpted the section on the etiquette for a lady hosting an evening party.  There is a matching section for the (female) guests at an evening party as well as sections for ladies hosting or attending balls.  I have spent a great deal of time over the years reading about mid-nineteenth century ballroom etiquette, but considerably less on that for more informal events.  I thus found Mrs. Hartley's thoughts on the subject quite interesting.  It would be fun to host smaller events such as these, if one had both the sizable rooms and the servants that Mrs. Hartley assumes will be available or hired for the night.

Since the book is available online (see below), I am not going to review all of Mrs. Hartley's general advice on the conduct of evening parties.  She discusses everything from the wording of invitations to the arrangement of dressing rooms to why one should take one's leave in the parlor rather than the hall.  Here, I'd like to look more narrowly at the useful tidbits of information she provides about dancing at such small and informal (by mid-nineteenth-century standards) events.  Most quotations below are drawn from "Etiquette for the Hostess" section, with those from "Etiquette for the Guest" marked as such.

The Russia

Russia has been much on my mind this week as I assembled a short presentation on on the influence of Russia -- or ideas or images of Russia -- on dance in France and England in the nineteenth century.  I didn't touch on America, but at the end of the century dancing master M. B. Gilbert, in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), included some dances with Russia-related names.  One of these was called, simply enough, the Russia.  Gilbert attributed it to Pittsburgh dancing master J. S. Christy.  The Russia was also included in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), which was in large part a French translation of Gilbert, under the literally-translated title "La Russie" and attributed to "S-A Christy".

Despite the name, I don't see any actual connection between the dance and the country.  The Russia is a classic back-and-forth-then-turning sequence dance intended for mazurka music.  It features two mid-dance bows, as pictured at left in an illustration from Gilbert (click to enlarge).  The steps include the polka redowa, the Newport, skipping, and walking steps.  All of these elements could plausibly exist in a Russian dance, but there's nothing about them that is particularly unique to Russia in this era.  My best guess is that the name is nothing more than a tribute to Russia, or to some idea of Russia.

The dance, however, is rather fun, and it's interesting to have a sequence dance of this pattern to use with mazurka music.  

Mysteries of the Manitou

I keep saying that I don't think there's much need to memorize all the variations in sources like Melvin Ballou Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) in order to accurately reenact the social dance of late nineteenth-century America. But I keep reconstructing and posting them anyway, since I find there's often something to learn by examining how they're constructed.  The dance published as the "Maniton", which I am fairly sure is a typo for "Manitou",  has two elements that caught my interest: a major change between sources and an unusual use of the "new waltz", the late nineteenth-century version of the box step that I've been thinking and writing about recently.  

First, the name.  In Gilbert, both the index and the title within the text are "Maniton".  As far as I can tell, that just isn't a word.  In the other source for the dance, George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), much of which is merely a French translation of Gilbert, it is "Maniton" in the text but "Manitou" in the index.  I think the latter is the actual name of the dance and/or its intended music.  Switching "n" for "u" is a typesetting error I've encountered elsewhere.

Charge of the Light Brigade

A year ago I wrote about Battle Confetti, a figure for the "German cotillion", a form of dance party game popular during the nineteenth century.  Other figures mentioned in the 1898 article that spurred that post included the Dewey figure, which I wrote about earlier this year, and Charge of the Light Brigade, which I'll discuss here, a hundred and sixty-one years after the event that inspired it.

I originally noticed two sources for this figure:

• the April, 1898, issue of The Director, a dance magazine edited by Maine dancing master, author, and enthusiastic professional organizer M. B. Gilbert.  Gilbert is best known today as the author of the 1890 tome Round Dancing, but for a few months he also managed to publish The Director.  It didn't last.  I suspect he wrote most of its contents himself.

• the 1899 edition of the Fashionable Quadrille Call Book and Guide to Etiquette by B. Coanacher, an earlier edition of which is online at the Library of Congress.  This edition has a cover proclaiming it Clendenen's Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette.

Here's the original language of the figure as it appears in each:

Charge of the Light Brigade
Music: --- Two-Step
--- Couples Up.  Sig.  Each lady select another lady.  Each gentlemen [sic] select another gentleman.  The ladies form a circle in the centre of the room; the gentlemen form a circle outside the ladies.  The gentlemen raise their hands, the ladies stepping back underneath the up-raised hands which should be lowered, forming what is known as the basket.  The basket thus formed should be divided in halves, each half retiring one to the head and the other to the foot of the room.
Sig.  Gentlemen raise their hands, ladies pass from under and rush to the opposite side of the room, taking as partners the gentlemen opposite them.
        -- M. B. Gilbert, editor. The Director, Vol. 1, No. 5., April 1898 (Portland, Maine).

Charge of the Light Brigade
Couples up; signal, each lady selects another lady each gentleman selects another gentleman; the ladies form circle in centre of the room, the gentlemen form circle outside the ladies, the gentlemen raise their hands, the ladies stepping back under the upraised hands which should be lowered, forming what is known as a basket; the basket thus formed should be divided in halves, each half retiring; one to the head and the other to the foot of the room, taking as partners the gentleman opposite them.
        -- B. Coanacher.  Clendenen's Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette / Fashionable Quadrille Call Book and Guide to Etiquette (Chicago, 1899)

The Trio

Since I frequently have to deal with an imbalance in numbers between the ladies and the gentlemen at nineteenth century balls, I'm always interested in dances that use a trio formation.  This can be one gentleman with two ladies or vice-versa, though the former is the more common situation.  

This dance, simply called "The Trio", appears in at least two editions of Elias Howe's American dancing master, and ball-room prompter (Boston, 1862 and 1866).  Howe's instructions are a bit vague and neglect to mention the actual timing of the figures, but a little experimentation convinced me that the following reconstruction is workable and fun.  This is an extremely easy dance, good for groups of beginners.  

Respect the box step

I've been thinking a lot over the last few years about the underlying skills needed for various forms of social dance.  A critical one is the ability to shift steps between time signatures, as I discussed a couple of months ago.  And one of the best examples of that is what happened with the much-maligned "box step" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The box step doesn't get a lot of respect among historical dancers in America because it is strongly associated with modern ballroom dance studio practices.  That's unfortunate, because I'm increasingly convinced that its historical incarnation, the "new waltz" (in contrast to the older valse à trois temps with its pirouette), is extremely important to know for anyone studying American social dancing of the 1880s-1910s.  Despite this, it often gets pushed aside in favor of the older style, which is usually taught first and thus becomes the default social waltz in modern reenactment.  That's not wrong, exactly; it's not like the older waltz vanished in favor of the new. But I think that we ought to be spending a lot more time on the new waltz, because it appears to be one of the fundamental building blocks of the social dance of the entire late Victorian/Edwardian/ragtime era.

Let's look at how the box step got used historically:

Kate Crosby's Polka Party

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

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

The Octagon Lancers, Figures 4 & 5

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

The Octagon Lancers, Figures 1-3

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on teaching polka and polka redowa

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

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