Capering & Kickery

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.

Dance on a Royal Progress, 1842

In the summer of 1842, twenty-three-year-old Queen Victoria, depicted at left in that year by the German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter, made a Royal Progress to Scotland, the first of many trips to the north and the beginning of her lifelong love of this part of her realm.  She was two years married to Prince Albert and already the mother of two children, whom she left behind on this trip.  Her third child would be born almost exactly nine months later.

The progress was thoroughly documented, at Victoria's request, by a Scottish baronet and author, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, who was the author of both novels and nonfiction about travel in Scotland.  His work, Memorial of the royal progress in Scotland, was published in 1843 in Edinburgh, London, and Dublin.

Lauder must have had exceptional access to the royal party during the journey.  He made a point of documenting every detail he could, including the weather, the guests at each dinner, the gowns worn by the queen and other important women, every attractive corner of the landscape that Victoria paused to survey, lyrics to songs sung to her in both English and Gaelic, and what seemed like every single change of carriage horses during the trip.  

Lauder's prose is ornate:

Reclining on her couch, on the deck of a gallant vessel, borne rapidly over those waves, the bulwarks of her island empire, graciously condescending to give her presence in friendly guise to her brave and hardy defenders, whose sinewy forms, and bold and weather-beaten countenances, were pledges for the peacefulness of her shores, whilst their light-hearted jollity, and laughing eyes, bespoke their felicity under the reign of a Sovereign who could thus sympathize with them in their harmless sports, Her Majesty was the very personification of Britannia, riding triumphantly over the ocean, surrounded by the guardian spirits of the waves.  (p. 42)

Since the book includes nearly five hundred pages in this style, plus an introduction and a thirty-five page index that gives a diagram of her yacht and a list of every building mentioned, it is quite a chore to plow through.  Happily, no one else will need to suffer through it for the sake of dance references!

Downfall of Paris (American contra)

The first thing to know about the tune "Downfall of Paris" is that, contrary to some references, it is not the same tune as that which goes with the song "Ça Ira".  It is rhythmically similar at the beginning -- hence the confusion -- and there's a vague thematic connection, but it's not quite the same piece of music.  Regency dancing master Thomas Wilson explained this succinctly in his Companion to the Ballroom (London, c1816):

To account for the unusual length of this tune — it was originally composed for a Quick March, in opposition & partly taken from the French National Air of Ça Ira, it has since become a favorite dance particularly with good dancers, as it requires a very long figure not easily performed by Tyros in the Art…

Note that when Wilson says a "favorite dance" he means a "favorite tune for dancing".  Good dancers apparently liked long tunes so that they could show off by setting lengthy combinations of figures to them.  And, indeed, various figure combinations were set to arrangements of it during the early nineteenth century in both England and America.  

A much longer explanation of the tune's history and association with "Ça Ira", may be found on the blog of the noted percussionist Robin Engelman, who has tracked down many musical manuscript sources and done such a thorough job explaining it all that I will simply refer you to his article, which helpfully includes a number of sound clips.

Its use as a dance tune (and that of "Ça Ira") during the Regency era might be an interesting topic, but it's not what I'm discussing today.

An 1840s Galopade Quadrille

I was looking for something new to do with galopade for my upcoming classes in Voronezh, Russia when I came across the same set of galopade quadrille figures in several different dance manuals from the 1840s.  That seemed to be a sign, and the quadrille turned out to be a fun little set.  (Edited 3/21/2015 to add: and the dancers in Voronezh liked it too!)

The quadrille instructions are quite straightforward.  There are six verses, each bracketed by the four couples performing a galopade around the set, turning at each position, and a "balance and turn" figure in which they chassez right and left and then turn partners by two hands, ending in close hold to prepare for the galopade at the beginning of the next verse. 

The "Dewey" Figure, 1899

A few months back I discussed a short piece from Harper's Bazaar naming popular dances for the winter of 1898-1899.  In that piece, the "Dewey" cotillion figure, named after the famous admiral, was mentioned.  At the time I had no source for this figure and instead described a similar confetti-throwing figure.  Since then, I've unexpectedly come across a description in the 1899 edition of the Fashionable Quadrille Call Book and Guide to Etiquette by B. Coanacher.  (An earlier edition is online at the Library of Congress.) The 1899 edition has a new cover proclaiming it Clendenen's Quadrille Book and Guide to Etiquette.

F. Leslie Clendenen was a St. Louis-based dancing master and author of at least one actual dance manual, but he is most remembered today as the editor of the 1914 compilation Dance Mad.  It's not clear to me whether he actually wrote or edited any of this book or whether the publisher just slapped on a cover with a prominent name to improve sales.  The Clendenen cover also appears on a 1917 edition which adds still more dances and some sheet music as well.

Here's the description:

The "Dewey" Figure

will be very popular, the theme is the Bombardment of Manila, and naturally calls for quite a display of patriotic colors.  The dancers are arranged in parallel columns and at a signal march, moving in lines executing a strategic play at battle.  Finally they line up in two imposing columns, the women on one side, men on the other.  On the floor is the stock of ammunition, consisting of red, white and blue paper hearts.  At the signal, the bombardment begins, and the combatants seize the hearts and hurl them at their adversaries.  The fun increases as the battle waxes hot and the colored hearts burst and the colored paper contents are sent fluttering about.  In the end, there is a complete capitulation and the partners waltz off together.

Once again we're back to the patriotic fervor engendered by the Spanish-American War, as discussed in my earlier post.  The props used are more along the lines of those used in the French figure Les Boules de Neige (Snowballs), with paper hearts full of confetti made to burst on impact.  It is somewhat more practical than Battle Confetti in not having the dancers end in a circle and not requiring mysterious strings crossing the ballroom.  As with other confetti figures, it's best done when there is a quiet cleanup crew on hand with brooms!

The "parallel columns" and "strategic play" are vague enough for some fun to be had if the columns (two, women and men? or more?) are provided with imaginative "generals".  It's not really clear whether the bombardment is meant, as in Snowballs, to select partners by whom one hits or whether each is bombarding the person who is directly across in the opposing column and thus destined to become their partner.  Or possibly the dancers just have a grand old time randomly covering each other in confetti before finding their original partners.  Though the waltz is specified for the final dance, there's no reason a polka or two-step could not be used instead, unless the entire cotillion is waltz-only.

"Dewey" is also like Snowballs (and Battle Confetti) in that it is usable by large numbers of dancers.  Indeed, the description suggests that it might be a "general figure" meant for all the participants in the cotillion. 

Snowball fight!

In honor of tonight's incoming blizzard, and because I've been thinking lately about cotillion figures that scale up well for large groups, let's talk about Les Boules de Neige.  For those who don't speak French, that would be...The Snowballs!

A Late Victorian Galopade Country Dance

Galopade country dances turn up most frequently in the early-mid-nineteenth-century (1830s & 1840s), but they're not unknown later on.  A "Galopede" (under a wide variety of spellings) is still found in folk and traditional dance communities in Britain and former colonies such as Australia.

I have two sources for this particular galopade, both only vagely dated: Rudolph Radestock's The Royal Ball-Room Guide (London & Otley, c1877) and The People's Ball Room Guide, edited by James Scott Skinner (Dundee & London, c1905).  Both of these books were at least in part compiled (or plagiarized) from other dance manuals.  I suspect there is an earlier common source for this galopade -- there is nothing about it that would make it inappropriate as early as the 1840s.  If anything, it's rather old-fashioned for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  I'd also call it more typical for England or Scotland than America, where galopades don't seem to have been as common or had the same staying power.

Skinner classifies this galopade as a children's dance: "To Follow the March in a Children's Ball", presumably after ending a Grand March in platoons and flipping alternate lines of dancers around to create the couple-facing couple lines shown at left in a diagram from The People's Ball Room Guide.  Radestock doesn't specify an age group, and adults certainly did galopades -- and much sillier things -- in ballrooms during the nineteenth century.  It's a nice, easy dance that would be good for a ballroom full of beginners.

"agoing to dance the spanish dance"

"...George Cowls says tell Nancy he is right in his glory to day and when he comes home he is agoing to dance the spanish dance with you and he says tell Abby he is agoing through ceders swamp with her..."
           -- Pvt. Jairus Hammond to Nancy Titus, December 8, 1862

Here's rare documentation of a specific dance: a mention in a letter from a Union soldier during the American Civil War to his sister, dated one hundred and fifty-two years ago today, that another man plans to dance the Spanish Dance (previously described here) with her when he returns.  There has been no real doubt that the Spanish Dance was actually danced and was as popular as its frequent appearance in dance manuals suggests.  I have found it listed on dozens of dance cards.  But this is another little piece of documentation demonstrating that its popularity extended well down the social scale.

The Yale Schottische, 1895

As previously noted, I always have an eye out for dances named after Yale University and Yale-related dance ephemera.  Walking through the campus earlier today on my way to a meeting reminded me that I had another Yale-themed dance to discuss: the Yale Schottische, which was published with the eponymous sheet music in 1895 and dedicated to the Yale University Football Association.  Yale has one of the oldest football programs in the world and was a regular national title winner in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Some of the players pictured at left (click to enlarge) are probably among the several Yalies of the 1890s chosen as All-Americans or inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.  (More details about Yale's place in football history may be found here.)

The music for the Yale Schottische was composed by J. Edward Geary, but the dance was choreographed by a local  dancing master, C. Francis Malone, who regularly taught Yale students, probably including some of the football players in the photograph!  An article about Malone from 1896 notes that the Yale Schottische has been "danced onstage at Daly's Theater, New York, and in the greater part of the United States."

The Yale Schottische is actually a double-length schottische sequence -- eight measures instead of four.  The general pattern of the dance is quite straightforward, but several details are left unspecified.  I have used my best guesses on those and included both options where there is no way to make a definitive choice.

Battle Confetti

One hundred and sixteen years ago today, the magazine Harper's Bazaar published a brief blurb predicting fashionable dances for the winter would be of "military tone", no doubt influenced by the burst of patriotic fervor occasioned by the brief Spanish-American War, which by the autumn of 1898 had moved into peace negotiations.  The article gives a quick peek at what dances interested Americans (or, at least, American dancing masters) in the second-to-last winter of the nineteenth century.

Ending a Grand March

In almost seven years of writing Kickery (has it really been that long?) I think I've only once said anything at all detailed about the Grand March, which was generally performed as the opening dance at American balls in the latter part of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, though occasionally it appears later on the program.  Clearly an overview is overdue!

This isn't it.

While working recently on the ball program for a pair of Civil War-era balls to be held in Gettysburg in November, I started wondering idly how many ways there were to end a Grand March.  So I made a little list.  I won't be using most of these, alas; the Gettysburg balls are insanely crowded and thus do not lend themselves to really interesting Marches.  But I thought it might be fun to share some of the possibilities.

German Waltz (American contra dance)

This simple and attractive waltz contra dance figure appears under the name German Waltz in at least two of the mid-nineteenth-century dance manuals of Boston musician, caller, and author Elias Howe, as well as under the name Narragansett Waltz in at least one other.  I first encountered it under the German Waltz name, so that is the one I habitually use, though the association with the tune(s) "Narragansett Waltz" actually came a few years earlier and both names seem to belong belong to the tunes rather than the dance figures.  

My interest in reconstructing this dance arose from a desire for a mid-century waltz country dance that could satisfy dancers the same way the Spanish Dance does and thus occasionally replace it at balls.  I love the Spanish Dance, but after more than two decades of dancing and calling it, a little variety is pleasant!

Along with being a nice change of pace socially, the German Waltz also makes an excellent performance piece.  Most longways country dances are not particularly good performance pieces, since the nature of the longways formation means that the dancers spend a lot of time with their backs to the audience.  In the German Waltz, the dancers spend most of their time either facing up and down the set or waltzing in a circle.  This makes it a much more audience-friendly dance.

How to Become a Belle, 1888

More from my archive of dance articles!  Here's a trenchant little commentary on ballroom etiquette and society manners, thinly disguised as an "overheard conversation" between two young women, a first-year debutante (Mamie) and her more experienced mentor (Clara).  It was published in the Boston Daily Globe on December 23, 1888. 

While Clara is genuinely trying to be helpful with her advice on how to become popular, the author's disapproval of the entire system is quite apparent in the "provoking" questions asked by innocent-but-observant Mamie.

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Clara wants Mamie to dance less with the interesting and courteous Frank Harrington and more with the inspid "beau" Arthur Jones:

"But there's something to Frank Harrington, while Arthur Jones is insipid.  He doesn't know anything but the inane society gossip."

"But he's one of the beaux, Mamie; you must remember that."

"Why, he's not entertaining, is he?"

"No-o; I can't say that I ever found him so.  But he always dances with the swellest girls.  You never saw him with a wall-flower, did you?"

Ballroom Heroes, 1897

I'm in the midst of a particularly stuporous jet-lagged stupor, so here's a very serious article from 1897 to entertain everyone until my wits return.  Oh, those manly Boston dandies!

A few equally serious editorial comments are interpolated in italics.

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Dancing with the Wine Clerks, 1888

I'm trying this summer to share some of my eclectic collection of descriptions of dancing, specific dances, and balls from various periodicals.  These mini-sources provide useful context for the descriptions and recommendations given in dance manuals. 

The report from the Boston Daily Globe of the first ball of the East Boston Wine Clerks in 1888 adds nothing to my knowledge of specific dances, but it does provide a bit of information about the ball in general, including the very spectacular decorations.  Apparently wine clerks really know how to throw a party.  Who'd have guessed?

The Five Step York

The Five Step York, created by Indianapolis dancing master D. B. Brenneke, is yet another of the myriad variations for the York, one of the more durable and popular redowa/mazurka waltz variations of the late nineteenth century.  It builds directly on Brenneke's own New York sequence.  While it is not a regular part of my "York set", the Five Step York is an easy little variation to add to one's York repertoire.

I am aware of only two published descriptions of the Five Step York: in English, in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), and in French, in [George] Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), where it is listed as "Le York à 5 Pas".  Gilbert puts it under redowa/mazurka variations, and Lopp lists it as a mazurka.  Much of Lopp is simply a translation of Gilbert, but he differs just enough to add either clarity or confusion to some of the descriptions.  In this case, I believe that both Gilbert and Lopp have flaws in their descriptions, but I can make two reasonable guesses as to what the actual sequence should be.

Programming a Ball, 1896

The American periodical Harper's Bazaar was started in 1867 by the company Harper & Brothers as a weekly fashion magazine.  It is well-known to those interested in nineteenth-century costume for its beautiful, highly detailed fashion plates and still exists today as a glossy monthly magazine.

On February 22, 1896, Harper's Bazaar published a short article entitled "Fashionable Dances of the Day" that gave advice to anyone constructing a program for a ball, based on what was fashionable in New York City at the time:

those [dances] which are the most popular here in New York, for instance, are universally recognized as the dances correct for any entertainment which may be given elsewhere

New York attitudes appear not to have changed in the slightest in the last century.

Walking Around

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

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

Seriously???

A Polka Redowa Quadrille

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

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

Dancing the Bon Ton Gavotte

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

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

The Oddly Popular Bon Ton Gavotte

I mentioned the Bon Ton Gavotte briefly and unflatteringly a couple of months ago in the context of its possible appearance on an 1894 dance card.  I haven't changed my opinion of the dance, but in the course of unrelated research I've accidentally accumulated more information on it than I ever would have expected.  I am apparently fated to try to make sense of it.

One of the common questions I get whenever I teach one of these weird little late nineteenth-century dances is whether it was actually done anywhere outside the creator's dance studio, which in this case was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Much to my astonishment, the answer in this case seems to be yes.  Even leaving aside the dance card's ambiguous "Bon Ton", the trail of the Bon Ton Gavotte runs from not only through the northeastern United States but also as far as California, Ontario, Nova Scotia, England, and France. 

Two-Stepping en français

As previously noted, European descriptions of American dances like the late nineteenth-century two-step are sometimes more helpful than American ones.  Having spent more time than expected this past weekend speaking French in Toronto (with a bunch of folks from Montréal), I'm inspired today to point out a couple of American-influenced descriptions of the two-step from Paris around 1900.

A Two-Step Quadrille, Pittsburgh, 1894

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

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

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

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

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

Here's how to dance it:

Dance Card: Sons of Veterans, 1894

At left is a dance card for a "Grand Easter Ball" held on Tuesday, March 27, 1894, by a local Sons of Veterans chapter in Middletown, New York.  That's actually a couple of days after Easter (March 25th that year), but I suppose they could hardly hold a ball during Holy Week itself.  Midweek balls seem to have been surprisingly common in the nineteenth century, judging from ball invitations and dance cards I've examined.

The Sons of Veterans was a youth organization (14 and up, with a junior branch for ages 6-14) for the sons of veterans of the Civil War.  It was formed in 1881 as a combination fraternal order and paramilitary training group.  By 1890 it had over 100,000 members.  More informaton about the group may be found on Wikipedia or on the webpage of its descendant organization, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.  The two pages conflict on some points about the early history of the Sons of Veterans -- there seem to have been some organizational politics with the veteran's organization -- but I am not sufficiently curious to research the details myself.

In 1894 the original teenage members would have been young men in their twenties, a very suitable age group for holding a ball.

The front of the card depicts a young soldier holding a rifle with bayonet.  I am no expert on military uniforms, so I can't say whether the uniform represents (accurately or otherwise) a Civil War soldier, a soldier of 1894, or perhaps the Sons of Veterans' own uniform.  The general look is similar to the soldier on the left in this New York Public Library image, which shows soldiers from 1881-1903.  I will leave it open to any experts who want to chime in on this topic in the comments.

The back of the card shows the Sons of Veterans medal with the organization's name in Latin.

The card is generally in good shape, despite a blot on the front and someone having scribbled on the back of it.  There is no attached pencil, but the cord and tassel survive.  The card was never used.

A Victorian "Sir Roger de Coverley"

Several years ago I wrote up a description of a version of Sir Roger de Coverley from the early nineteenth century and talked a little about the background of the tune and the association of the dance with Charles Dickens' famous novel, A Christmas Carol.

 

Over time, Sir Roger de Coverley mutated in various ways, and I promised back then to describe some of them.  Better five years late than never, here's another version, a "modernized" English one from the mid-nineteenth century which moves along much more briskly than the earlier version, even with a fairly lengthy set.  According to Mrs. Nicholas Henderson, who seems to have been the first to publish this version, the country dance was generally in decline in the English ballroom by the early 1850s, but Sir Roger de Coverley was an exception:

 

To make amends for the fashionable dereliction and banishment of the old favourites of "Merrie Englande," it is usual to conclude the evening's festivities with one particular species of Country Dance, called "Sir Roger de Coverley."  It has of late enjoyed considerable vogue, and is patronised by her Majesty, at her own entertainments.  We give it as at present danced at the Palace, somewhat modernised and adapted to the prevailing taste.

 

Mademoiselle Angelina

Kickery has been all-Regency-all-the-time lately due to my current research projects, but I'm going to take a little break from that era and move forward to the 1840s. 

While digging around in sheet music archives for something else entirely, I came across a new piece of music for the version of the five-step waltz taught by Pietro Saracco in New York in the mid-19th century.  New five-step music is hard to find, but that alone wouldn't make this worthy of note.  What's exciting about it is the cover page, shown at left (click to enlarge).

"The Angelina" was composed by Arnold Müller and was published in New York with a copyright date of 1846, which makes it earlier than most other sheet music for the dance.  The earliest previous evidence I had for this five-step waltz was sheet music by Christian Nolff dated 1848 and 1849, though I did have one earlier (1844) piece of music.  So it's nice to have a new piece by a different composer, and to bring the origin of the dance back a couple of years, almost as far back as the polka.  It hadn't yet even acquired its more compact title of "five-step waltz", which suggests to me that the dance was very, very new at this point.

Even more interesting is that the dance is credited as a "New Waltz in Five Steps invented by Monsieur Saracco, choreographist, and Mademoiselle Angelina, first teacher of the Parisian dancing academy of M(onsieu)r Cellarius".  Mademoiselle Angelina is the namesake of the music.

This is sensational to me on two levels. 

Double Scotch Reel

Double Scotch Reel does not seem to be Scotch and, as I reconstruct it, does not actually include any reels (heys).  It is a trio contra (three facing three in long lines own the room) which I have found only in one source: the Gems of the Ball Room Call Book published by E. T. Root & Sons in Chicago in 1896.  The Gems call book appears to have been published specifically as dance calls for quadrilles and contra dances to go with the tunes in a series of music books called Gems of the Ball Room also published by Root. 

The contra dance figures in Gems have some noticeable variations from those found in New England manuals such as those of Elias Howe, which might indicate regional variations between the northeast and midwest or might be simple carelessness on the part of the editor.  The language and format of the different figures makes it obvious that they were pulled from different sources, so I suspect that somewhere there is another source for Double Scotch Reel, and that the collator of dances for Gems copied it exactly.

I love Double Scotch Reel both because I am perennially fascinated by the possibilities of the trio dance form and because the figures of this dance, as I reconstruct them, flow together beautifully.  There is a modern reconstruction with a rather different take on the dance which I will discuss briefly below.

Here are the figures in the exact language and with the number of bars given in Gems:
    4b    Swing right hand lady       
    4b    Swing left hand lady
    8b    Ladies chain, right hand partner
    8b    Balance four with left hand partner
    8b    Six right and left
    8b    Forward all and pass through

and my own reconstruction, with extensive notes following:

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Polka Dot Waltz

The Polka Dot Waltz was either a sequence dance or waltz variant described by Melvin B. Gilbert in Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) and later by [George] Washington Lopp in his translation-plus of Gilbert's book, La Danse (Paris, 1903), in which it is listed as Polka Dot (Valse).  Both Gilbert and Lopp credit it to Herman Strassburg, presumably the same dancing master who was the author of the Call Book of Modern Quadrilles (Detroit, 1889).

The pattern of the Polka Dot, its imaginative name, and the way Lopp formats the title make me suspect that this was not a variation for normal waltzing but instead was intended as a choreographed sequence dance matched to a particular piece of music.  I've only been able to find one piece of sheet music by that title, "The Polka Dot Waltz", by Edward A. Abell, (San Francisco, 1873), which is archived on the Library of Congress website.  It does not include dance instructions.  It is possible that Strassburg wrote this as choreography to go with it, or with a different waltz by the same name, but in the absence of proof one way or the other, it is also possible to dance it to any waltz music with even eight-bar phrases, either by the entire room dancing it in unison or by individual couples using it (carefully!) as a variation.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Double Glide Waltz

The Double Glide Waltz, as described by Melvin B. Gilbert in his compendium Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), is an elaboration on the alternating measures of sliding and waltzing found in variations like the Metropole.  In La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903, it is called La Double Boston and credited to Lopp himself.  Much of La Danse is a direct French translation of Gilbert, so Lopp's addition of the credit to himself is notable.  

Like other late variations such as the Bowdoin and Fascination, the Double Glide Waltz alters the sliding steps, in this case to include in each sideways measure two "slide-closes", one slow and one fast.  The pattern here is "one, two-and-three" or "slow, quick-quick-slow".  It also reverses the Metropole pattern from slide/waltz/slide/waltz to waltz/slide/waltz/slide, a distinction which is not particularly significant when actually dancing.

New Scotia Quadrille

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

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

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

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

Sackett's Harbor

There is no way in which this mid-nineteenth century American country (contra) dance can be said to be traditional in format, either for the Civil War era or before.  That's precisely what attracted me to it: the unusual twist in the figures makes them stand out from the many others published in the mid-nineteenth century.

On the matter of names
The more contra dances of the 1850s and 1860s that I look at, the more I suspect that the interchangeability of tunes and figures of the Regency era applies just as much later in the century, eventually evolving into the modern contra practice of dance figures having names and, with a very few traditional exceptions, being done to whatever tune suits the fancy of the musicians.  In this case, these figures appear under at least four different names, which suggests to me that the names belong to the music rather than the dance figures:

Another dance for Miss McLeod's

Way back in the first year of Kickery, I wrote about the mid-nineteenth-century American contra dance "Light Dragoon", which Elias Howe assigned to the popular tune "Miss [or Mrs.] McLeod's Reel".  Here's another example of a country dance for the tune, this one taken from London dancing master Rudolph Radestock's The Royal Ball-Room Guide and Etiquette of the Drawing-Room (London, c1877).  Country dancing was not a major part of the fashionable London ballroom by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, though a few traditional dances like Sir Roger de Coverley and the Triumph appear to have lingered.  Radestock's book is unusual in giving not only six specific dances, including a polka country dance and a galopade, but another fifteen "various" country dances with no tune or other name attached and with very generic figures distinguished only by the frequent use of a poussette as the final figure.  "Miss M'Leod" [sic] is one of Radestock's half-dozen specific dances.  

New York, New York

The New York is another of the myriad "redowa and mazurka" variations given in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890).  Along with the Fascination, it is one of only a few variations credited to Indianapolis dancing master D. B. Brenneke.  It reappears among the material translated directly from Gilbert in [George] Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903), where it is listed as a mazurka and again credited to Brenneke. 

Gilbert gives both this "New York" and another dance called "The New York", making it unclear whether the name refers to the city or whether it is simply a new version of the York.  Lopp lists it as La New York, along with two different dances called La Nouvelle York.  Lopp's translations suggest that the reference is to the city as much as to the popular dance.  That might make it something of a pun, since the New York does include the characteristic sliding sequence found in the first measure of the York. 

Contradicting this is the appearance of the dance in the addenda of the fifth edition of William B. De Garmo's The Dance of Society (New York, 1892), where it is listed simply as "The York, No. 2", which leads one to the new-version-of-the-York interpretation of the title.  De Garmo notes that "This method has become very popular."

The Independent York

The Independent York is an interesting variation on the original York, albeit one that was probably rarely danced outside a studio context.  I have found it in only two sources.  The earlier is Melvin Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), where it is uncredited, suggesting that Gilbert himself created it.  The later source is La Danse, by [George] Washington Lopp, published in Paris in 1903, much of which is simply a French translation of Gilbert.  It appears there as L'Indépendant York and is credited to Gilbert.  The sequence is identical in both sources.  Gilbert classifies it, as he does the York, under "redowa and mazurka"; Lopp lists it as a mazurka.

The Independent York is danced in 3/4 time, with four repeats of the rhythm "1&2-3 &1-2-3".  Lopp gives a metronome tempo of 144 beats per minute.  The dancers begin in a standard ballroom hold, the gentleman facing the nearest wall and the lady the center of the room. 

The complete sequence takes eight measures.  The first four measures are the same as the York itself:

1        Slide the left foot along line of dance
&2     Close with the right foot and slide the left foot again (chassé)
3        Close with the right foot, displacing left into a raised second position (cut)

&1     Hop on the right foot (optionally, clicking heels) and slide left to side
2        Close with the right foot, displacing left (cut)
3        Leap onto the left foot, crossing the line of dance and making a half-turn

(repeat all, reversing feet)

Above is the gentleman's footwork; the lady dances opposite.  The last &123 is a polka redowa step.  In four measures, one complete turn is made.

The second half of the Independent York repeats exactly the same steps.  What distinguishes it is that, in a very unusual move for a nineteenth century couple dance, the partners separate and turn away from each other, much like casting off as performed in early country dances.  For the first two measures, the dancers release their hold and move parallel to each other, curving away from each other slightly.  On the polka redowa in the second measure, they make a half turn, ending back to back and circling back against line of dance.  On the repeat, they turn halfway at the beginning of the first measure to slide sideways against line of dance, facing each other, then come together again on the polka redowa of the final measure.

The entire eight measures are then repeated as often as the dancers like.

The Independent York is not entirely leadable with a dancer who does not already know what to expect, though a skilled dancer with fast reflexes might figure it out visually if the York step pattern has already been well established.  But with a partner who already knows the move, the lead is easy: do a few normal York sequences to establish the pattern, then simply release the lady with a gentle push along the line of dance.

Since the Independent York travels against the line of dance and takes extra space to each side, the gentleman needs to take care before starting the move to have sufficient room to execute the variation without interfering with other couples on the floor.

Alternating racket waltz patterns

• Era: 1880s into very early 1900s

The last of the racket waltz patterns appears only in Allen Dodworth's Dancing and its Relation to Education and Social Life (New York, 1885, reprinted 1900) and is thus saddled with his prosaic yet unwieldy title, "Alternating One Slide and Three Slide to Waltz."  That's more a description of the technique a name, but it's what we've got.

Unlike "Alternating the One Slide and Three Slide to Galop," more usually known simply as the racket, the waltz-time version does not just combine the two existing racket waltzes (one-slide and two-slide) in a short/short/long short/short/long pattern.  That works in waltz time since both the "short" and "long" patterns take only one measure apiece.  Instead, this racket actually uses a three-slide racket, as in galop time, stretched in an irregular way from four beats to six, similarly to how the one-slide racket in galop is stretched from two beats to three in waltz time...but more complicated.

Run, run...a redowa!

To be perfectly specific, that's a polka redowa, a polka step in slow waltz time.  This variation for it, called The Run, was, as far as I can tell, unique to the fifth edition (1892) of  William B. De Garmo's The Dance of Society.  

The sequence is simplicity itself:

1. In normal closed position, dance polka redowa, turning (six measures)
2. Release hands and open up into "military" position, side by side (as described and shown here).
3. Run forward six steps (two measures)
4. Join hands again to repeat from the start

De Garmo made a point of noting that the polka redowa should be danced in a gliding style as in his description of the polka step, found earlier in the book: 

"...hop or spring on right foot and almost simultaneously glide left foot directly sidewise to 2d position -- count one; draw right foot to 1st position -- two; glide left foot again to 2d position -- three..."

He also noted in the polka description that the hop "may be so modified as to be nearly imperceptible," provided the dancers take care not to lose the elasticity of the knee.  

In his description of The Run, he reiterated that it should be danced with "the three steps being glided, the glides a little longer than usual" and that the running steps should be "with spirit."