Capering & Kickery

Russian Militaire

"For children there have been accepted La Veta and the Russian Militaire, the latter a semi-drill and march step, combining simple and graceful poses for the little ones."

-- Marie Petravsky, "New Fads in Dances", The Sunday Morning Call (Lincoln, Nebraska). Sunday, October 25, 1896, p. 5.

The accepting organization referred to was The Western Association and Normal School of Masters of Dancing, which also accepted a number of dances for adults that year.  The newspaper article was timed to the start of the new dancing season in New York, but on the sheet music it is noted that the dance was adopted on June 11, 1896, in Toledo, Ohio.  It is also claimed, apparently inaccurately, that "This Dance was the only Dance adopted out of ten others presented." 

The choreographer of the dance was John A. Mahler, brother of the much better-known St. Louis dancing master Jacob Mahler.  Both brothers taught children; another of John Mahler's dances, the Two and a Half Step, was inscribed to "the Young Ladies of the Mary Institute and Hosmer Hall", two St. Louis schools.  There is no indication on the sheet music that it was meant for children, which makes one wonder how many of the other simple sequence dances of the period might also have been meant for the younger set!

Caroline Walker's Dream Waltz, 1914

The Dream Waltz appeared in Caroline Walker's book The Modern Dances, three editions of which appeared in the year 1914.  Her Dream Waltz appeared in at least the second and third editions; the latter is available online here.  Another Dream Waltz appeared in both editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's Dance Mad (also both 1914), but it is distinct enough to be considered a separate dance, which I will look at in some future post.

The Dream Waltz is a simple hesitation sequence.  The dancers take normal closed ballroom hold.  The gentleman starts on the left foot, the lady on the right.  Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.
  

The Dream Waltz (16 bars of fast 3/4 waltz music)
1b    Slide left foot to the side (1), slowly closing right foot to left with weight on (3)
1b    Slide left foot to the side (1), swinging right foot to left (2) and away again (3)
            (making a quarter-turn)

1b    Step onto right foot (1), slowly closing left foot to right with weight on (3)
1b    Slide right foot to the side (1), swinging left foot to right (2) and away again (3)
            (making a quarter-turn)

4b    Four walking steps backward, one step per measure, starting left foot, dipping on fourth step
4b    Three walking steps forward, one step per measure, starting left foot, then shift weight back and dip backward on the fourth measure

4b    Balance forward onto left foot, back onto right, forward onto left, back onto right, rotating counter-clockwise (spin turn)

Repeat from the beginning.

Cadet Waltz

Instructions for The Cadet Valse, by L. W. Vizay, instructor in dancing to the cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, were published in conjunction with sheet music for the dance composed by Frank Mayr.  A copy is available on line at the Chrystelle Trump Bond Dance and Music Collection, Goucher College Archives, from which the beautiful cover image at left (click to enlarge) is taken.  This copy is an English printing and dated 1892, but since the dance instructions appeared in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) under the name Cadet Waltz, the dance and music must be at least a couple of years earlier than that.  The dance instructions also appeared, under the name La Valse Cadet, in George Washington Lopp's La Danse (Paris, 1903).  All three sets of instructions are essentially identical, allowing for some shifts in terminology.

The Cadet Valse is an excellent example of dance steps specifically matched to music.  In this case, it's rather unusual music which alternates two bars of mazurka music with four bars of waltz.  With that pattern, the sequence is essentially undanceable to any other music.  I've done an electronic version of the first twelve bars, since it's really necessary to hear the musical accenting to understand the dance.

The Rutcher Waltz

In my earlier post on the Ruchter, I mentioned the mixed-tempo version described by William De Garmo in the fifth edition of The Dance of Society (New York, 1892).  This version was called the Rutcher (not Ruchter) Waltz, and was comprised of sixteen measures of 2/4 music, and sixteen measures of 3/4 (waltz) music.  To be precise, that is eight measures, repeated, of each, as may be seen in the music from De Garmo's book at left (click to enlarge).  This dual-time format is similar to that of the Rye Waltz, which shifts from 4/4 to 3/4.  De Garmo claimed that it was an old folk dance, which I find believable from its style, but I haven't found any trace of it under either Rutcher or Ruchter.  It may well be the original version of the dance, with the Gilbert/Lopp Ruchter being a variation created for a particular piece of music.

A quick summary of the dance is that it is a "doubled" version of the Ruchter using waltz music for the second part.  To break that down in more detail:

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.

Exeter Waltz

Last year I wrote up Massachusetts dancing master George F. Walters' Exeter Caprice, one of two Walters dances that appeared in the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation, Dance Mad.  The other was the Exeter Waltz, a hesitation waltz sequence which, at sixteen bars, is long enough to function as a standalone sequence dance or, if the surrounding dancers are accustomed to accommodating hesitations, used as a puzzle-piece for improvisation.  There is no choreographic connection between the Exeter Waltz and the Exeter Caprice.

There were some difficulties in reconstructing the Exeter Waltz (see the Reconstruction Notes below); the following version is what I came up with after some experimentation with different possibilities.

Starting position: normal ballroom hold, gentleman's back to line of dance and lady facing line of dance.  Gentleman starts left foot, lady right.  The instructions below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

The dance consists of sixteen measures of waltz music divided into two eight-bar sections.  Turns to the right are clockwise or natural; turns to the left are counter-clockwise or reverse.

Humming Bird Dance

"Humming Bird Dance" is a hesitation waltz sequence which appeared in the first and second editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis; both editions 1914).  It is attributed to "Mr. Menancon", who appears in the list of credits at the end of the second edition as "Elmond Menancon, 909 Elm Street, Manchester, N[ew] H[ampshire]".  I believe the first name ought to be "Edmond", since a dancing master of that name is listed in Manchester city directories from 1906 and 1918.  In the 1906 Manchester Directory, Edmond Menancon is listed separately as an artist, dancing master, and, interestingly, the sexton of a church.  Here's Menancon's advertisement from page 819 of the 1906 directory:

The sexton position seems a somewhat odd fit for an artist-photographer-dance teacher; the triple career doesn't seem to leave much time for a day job.  Perhaps it was his father?

In the 1918 residential directory, as transcribed here, he is listed as an "artist/teacher [of] dancing" having "rms" (presumably "rooms") at 318 Pearl. 

The Humming Bird Dance itself is a sixteen-bar sequence done in "one-step waltz" style, one step (sometimes with embellishments) per bar of waltz music.  The instructions in Dance Mad list it as for "Any waltz music."  Whichever piece is used, it will need to be at a fast hesitation waltz tempo, or the dance will drag.

To start, both dancers face line of dance, the gentleman behind and to the left of the lady.  The lady's right arm makes a semi-circle so that her right hand is over her head, palm up.  The gentleman takes the tips of her fingers with his own right hand.  Left hands are joined and extended in front.  This is referred to as "a la minuet", which would no doubt have startled  dancers of the original minuet in the eighteenth century.  Both dancers begin with the left foot.  

The basic step is onto the toes with a slight dip.  There is also a repeated three-beat sequence of stepping with a stronger dip (1), striking the free foot on the floor as it swings forward (2), and hopping while extending the free foot into fourth position forward (3).  The latter will be listed below as a "step-strike-hop" for brevity.

The Rocker Hesitation Waltz

Montréal dancing master Frank H. Norman was last seen on Kickery when I discussed his description of the Rag-Time Crawl, from his Complete Dance Instructor (Ottawa, 1914).  The Rocker Hesitation, or Rocker Hesitation Waltz, is another easy sequence dance attributed to Norman and taken from the pages of The Two Step, a journal of "Dancing, Acting and Music" that in 1919 was based in Buffalo, New York, and edited by Layton Walker, whose delightful cotillion (German) figures have featured on Kickery several times.  The associate editors were a Who's Who list of American dancing masters with a few international names, including many well-known to dance historians today from their surviving works: F. Leslie Clendenen, Albert W. Newman, Jacob Mahler, Charles d'Albert, George Washington Lopp, Oscar Duryea, and Norman himself.

The Rocker Hesitation was published in Volume XXIX, No. 6, of The Two Step, dated September 1919.  That year, the dancing masters were still struggling with the aftermath of the first World War and the musical and terpsichorean innovations of "jazzification" and the "shimmy" vs. the more respectable waltz, one-step, and foxtrot.  Among the interesting tidbits in the pages of The Two Step that year were that the waltz was coming back at the "slow" tempo of 48 bars (144 beats) per minute, which gives you some idea of how fast they were dancing it before the war! 

In a conveniently self-serving column in the October issue (in which the Rocker Hesitation Waltz instructions were reprinted) Norman stated, while discussing the rebound of dancing after the war, that

...as we are always craving for [sic] something new, England sends us a very pretty and easy new dance, one that will, no doubt, figure on all the programs this season.  It is called the Rocker Hesitation and is an offshoot or a rebound from a dance of somewhat similar name that proved too difficult for the average dancer to master with grace.

He doesn't go into details about the antecedent dance, but a plain "Rocker", attributed to Oscar Duryea, appears on other "latest dances" lists that year and might be the basis for the hesitation version.

It was noted in the November issue that Professor Norman demonstrated the Rocker Hesitation with a Mrs. S. Wyness for the visiting Prince of Wales at the Grand Army Dance on October 30, 1919 (one of two balls the Prince attended that evening) and that the Prince remarked that it was "a dainty and pretty dance."

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.

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).  

A St. Louis Hesitation Waltz (1914)

The generically named One Step Hesitation is a short hesitation waltz sequence that appeared in the second edition of the collection Dance Mad, or the dances of the day, compiled by F. Leslie Clendenen and published in St. Louis in late 1914.  It is subtitled "As Recommended by St. Louis Association Dancing Masters", and with no author listed, may have come from the hand of Clendenen himself.

Since the One Step Hesitation is almost entirely in the slowest possible type of hesitation (one step per bar of music), it calls for very fast waltz music or it will drag badly.  I prefer 180 beats per minute and up for this type of hesitation waltz.

The starting position is a normal ballroom hold with both dancers facing the line of dance.  The steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.  In general, forward steps are performed with a slight bounce to them: step (1), rise (2), fall (3).  

The full sixteen-bar sequence:

3b    Forward left, right, left; one step per bar
1b    Hop on left and swing right foot forward (1), step forward on right into a dip (2, 3)
4b    Face partner and step left sideways along line of dance, close the trailing foot; repeat step and close
(shift position slightly to the left so steps are entirely outside partner's feet)
3b    Three steps left, right, left around each other, clockwise, right hip to right hip, like a pomander walk
1b    Step strongly back on right foot into a dip (lady steps forward on left)
(shift position to the right)
3b    Three steps left, right, left around each other counter-clockwise, left hip to left hip
(end with the gentleman facing line of dance)
1b    Step strongly back on right foot into a dip (lady steps forward on left)
Repeat from the beginning

The last two dips are called "drop-dips" by Clendenen and are described fully under a different dance, the Dream Waltz, where each dip is referred to as "in reality a profound courtesy" by the gentleman, while the lady makes a "shallow dip" with the toes of her right (trailing) foot touching the floor.

For all three dips, the dancers need to rise again on the last beat of the measure in preparation for the next step.  These are not "hold that pose" moments, but brisk lunges 

The sequence is utterly straightforward to dance; the only real watch point other than coming out of the dips on time is the hop in the fourth measure.  The dancers need to avoid the common pattern of step (1), hop (2), swing foot (3).  In this dance, the hop is on the first beat of the next measure, so the dancers must step-rise-fall and then hop.  The dancers will notice a perceptible pause, but if the music is suitably fast, it won't feel awkward.

As a reconstruction, it is also fairly straightforward.  The only ambiguity is in the second half of the dance, when the dancers walk around each other for three measures.  In Dance Mad, the One Step Hesitation immediately follows the Rye Hesitation, which includes the same move with the dancers walking around each other for three measures then dropping into the dip/courtesy on the fourth, though in the Rye Hesitation, the walk-around does not reverse.  But the Dream Waltz, which follows after the One Step Hesitation, gives a slightly different turn called a "walking turn" in which the dancers shift their weight back and forth, more like a spin turn.  

Since the language in the One Step Hesitation is most like that of the Rye Hesitation (both use the phrases "walk three steps" and "moving around partners"), I've chosen to adopt the same movements for the walk-around part of this sequence.  

The One Step Hesitation can hardly be called a brilliant piece of choreography, but it is good for beginners because it incorporates common elements like the dips and walk-around.  It's not recommended for the social ballroom dancing, given the long stretches where there is no forward motion, unless all the dancers are doing it at the same time.

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:

A cautionary tale, 1837

The short story "Lyddy!", by Thomas Egerton Wilks, was published in a London journal, The Young Lady's Magazine, in 1837, its first year of publication, the works from which were collected in a single volume published in 1838.  

Though its title is similar to that of other ladies' magazines of the era, The Young Lady's Magazine actually had much loftier ambitions:

...to concentrate every energy in the production, not only of such matter as may amuse the fancy, but at the same time tend to expand the mind, elevate the morals, refine the intellect, and awaken, -- not the morbid sensibilities, too often produced by ill-selected fictions -- but those pure, unhacknied feelings of the youthful heart, which are in themselves a mine of inexhaustible treasures, and which, by their development, shed a halo of enchantment around.
      --- Preface, p. iii

Referring to fashion as "that universal enslaver" which it believe should be "far removed from those pages where the young and guileless are taught to seek for intellectual improvement", the editors declared that even their "light productions" (entertaining fiction)

...may sparkle and be redolent of mirth, but their wit shall never inflict a wound, and their humour shall never be tainted with aught offensive to the chastest delicacy.
        --- Address, p. 2

I don't generally spend a lot of time reading uplifting moral tracts, but I tripped over "Lyddy!" in one of my regular searches for nineteenth-century women's fiction with ballroom scenes.

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.  

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?  

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.

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:

A Group of Waltzers, 1817

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

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

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

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

Mr. Faurot's Hesitation Waltz

This hesitation waltz sequence by Seattle dance teacher George G. Faurot (c1879-1954) was published in both editions of F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914).  Faurot himself was a native of Lima, Ohio, where his uncle Ben discovered oil and his brother Lee eventually became mayor.  Faurot Park in Lima was donated by Ben and is named for him.  

According to George's obituary, he fought in the Spanish-American War and then had a career in the oil industry before moving to Seattle, where he ran the Faurot Studio of Dancing with his wife, Nellie, for thirty years.  The Faurots' residence in the late 1930s is now a historical site in Seattle.  The building that housed their dance studio, the Oddfellows Building, still stands and is still home to a dance studio, Century Ballroom, though the Faurot Ballroom itself seems to have been in the first-floor space which is now the Oddfellows Cafe.

Interestingly, Lee, before becoming mayor, also seems to have dabbled in dance teaching before ending up in the insurance business and politics.  A family passion?

Faurot's hesitation waltz consists of two sixteen-bar sections which Faurot noted can be used individually or combined into a single thirty-two-bar sequence.  The first section moves against the line of dance at one point, so it's not a good sequence to do in a crowded ballroom unless the whole room is dancing in unison.  The second section travels only intermittently, with two two-bar sets of in-place hesitations, but is more practical for general use.

A 3/4-time grapevine sequence, 1914

I've had sequence dances on my mind recently after some discussion earlier this week, which reminded me of this little sequence from the the second edition of F. Leslie Clendenen's 1914 compilation Dance Mad.  It appears there under the name "American Grapevine Dance" by Anthony J. Giaconia of Springfield, Massachusetts.  I know nothing about Mr. Giaconia except that on June 24, 1912, he was quoted on the front page of The Indianapolis News as one of a convention of dancing masters appalled by dances like the Grizzly Bear and Bunny Hug.  He found some dancing in a park there so disgraceful that it ought to be stopped "for the sake of decency".

The Grapevine Dance is so short (only eight bars) that it doesn't feel long enough to be a sequence dance all on its own, but the two measures in which the dancers move directly into the center of the room and back make it mildly risky to use simply as a variation; moving abruptly back and forth across the line of dance can cause problems for dancers coming up behind.  Doing this from an "inside lane" near the center of the room will be more polite if it is not being done in unison as a sequence dance.

The sequence is performed in a normal ballroom hold, traveling along the line of dance.  The gentleman starts facing the wall and the lady the center of the room.  He starts with the left foot and she with the right.

American Grapevine Dance (eight bars)
1b    Three-slide galop & half-turn (slide-close-slide-close-slide, 1&2&3)
1b    Three-slide galop & half-turn (slide-close-slide-close-slide, 4&5&6)
2b    Four steps of grapevine (side-cross behind-side-cross front, 1234), then step to the side and close (56)
1b    Three "trotting" steps straight back to center of the room (123)
1b    Three "trotting" steps forward (456)
2b    Four steps of grapevine (side-cross behind-side-cross front, 1234), then step to the side and close (56)

On the grapevines, the ladies cross in front first and then behind.  On the trotting steps they move first forward then back.

The reconstruction is quite straightforward; the only part that gave me any pause was a note that

In making the first step in the Grapevine in part 2 from last movement of part 1, it is necessary for the gentleman to make a three-quarter turn to the right so that the gentleman's back is turned to the line of direction and finish Grapevine from that position.  This makes a very fascinating step.

That didn't immediately make sense to me, but I think what is meant is that the dancers make a half-turn at the end of the second three-slide (which is done "over elbows") to get back to their starting orientation (gentleman facing wall/lady center).  The first step of the grapevine is sideways along the line of dance, but on the second (crossing) step, the man crosses behind and very briefly has his back to the line of dance before again stepping sideways along line of dance and crossing in front to finish the grapevine. 

No specific music is given; the only advice is for slow 3/4 time, specifically "three-step music".  Three-step is one of those unusual dances that turn up very occasionally on dance cards (such as this 1910 one), but I haven't done enough work with it to have a good feel for what makes a piece three-step music as opposed to waltz music.  The sequence does work nicely with waltz music at about 120 beats per minute. It is quite leadable with a good follower, even one who does not know it. 

Special thanks to Marci for demonstrating how leadable this dance is!

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.

Immoral Italians: Waltzing, 1807

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lyon Chassé

The Lyon Chassé, diagrammed at left, is a one-measure waltz variation which appeared in Troy and Margaret Kinney's  Social Dancing of To-Day (New York, 1914).  In essence, it inserts a brief moment of double-speed grapevine into a waltz.  This has the effect of changing the lead foot against the music.

The sequence is not particularly complicated.  The dancers are promenading forward in waltz time, one step to each beat of music.  The Lyon Chassé starts on the inside foot (gentleman's right, lady's left).  The dancers step forward, cross the outside foot over the inside foot to come facing each other, quickly cross behind as in a mirror grapevine, and step out to the side to face line of dance and continue promenading. 

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.

The Castles' Paul Jones

In 1914, Victor Records made a celebrity-endorsement deal with Vernon and Irene Castle, "the greatest exponents of Modern Dancing who supervise the making of Victor Dance Records".  The company put out a little booklet, Victor Records for Dancing, which included short instructions for various couple dances (including the brand-new foxtrot) plus an enthusiastic note from Vernon Castle about the superiority of Victor records and the indispensibility of the Victrola in teaching classes. 

The instructions for each dance were accompanied by a convenient list of suitable Victor recordings.  Tucked at the end of the book were instructions for a country dance and a Paul Jones circle mixer "as taught at the Castle School of Dancing, New York City".

In the past, I've discussed a very simple 1903 two-step circle mixer and a more complex English Paul Jones from the 1920s.  The Castles' version is quite similar to the 1903 one, but it's physically rather livelier while mentally less taxing; the dancers don't have to count. 

Here's the pattern:

8b    Slipping circle to the right
8b    Slipping circle to the left
??    Grand right and left (starting right hands to partner) until signal given
??    Dance with the person you are facing until signal given
Re-form the circle and repeat all of the above until the music ends.

The Castles helpfully confirm that "As the time for changing is optional, the signal, which is usually the blowing of a whistle, is left to the discretion of the director of the dance."

The reconstruction is fairly straightforward, but there are a few minor issues:

The printed instructions mistakenly list "grand right and left changing to counts of 8 measures", which I believe was more likely intended to be "counts of 8", or four counts per change of hands, which is a typical pace for a grand right and left.  It has to be some sort of error, since there is no exact duration for this figure; it goes until the signal is given.

The circles are described as "all slide to right chassé" and "Repeat to left chassé"; in practice, this is a "sixteen-slide galop" in each direction. That's a lot of slipping, so it wouldn't bother me particularly if it were cut to four measures each direction in practice. 

The slipping is a little tricky to manage when coming back together after dancing with a partner; any laggard dancers cannot easily join in without getting mowed down.  A signal by the director of the dance to tell the dancers when to start slipping is probably going to be required.  Making sure to signal to reform the circle with at least two measures' lead-time before the end of a phrase will help let the dancers get into position ready to start with the musical phrase.  Four might be safer.

The slipping circle starting to the right is weirdly reminiscent of the opening "grand round" change of an 18th-century French cotillion, though in no other respect does this dance resemble "Le Paul Jones", an unexceptional cotillion from the 1770s with no mixer element.

For music, dancer were referred to the lengthy list of "Victor Records for the One Step", but the Castles also noted that "The One-Step is generally used for the Paul Jones...but the Fox-trot, Canter or old-fashioned Waltz may be used."  In practice, an "old-fashioned waltz" would presumably require canter (1...3) rhyhm in the slipping circles, which would make for a much gentler dance.

It being the year for 1914 centennial balls, a Paul Jones is something to consider for a ball program, especially early in the evening, in order to break down social barriers and allow strangers to meet.

Twinkle, Twinkle: Fast and Slow

• Era: 1910s
• Dances: Foxtrot, One-Step, Hesitation Waltz

2014 marks one hundred years since the foxtrot made its first big splash, so it's very timely for me to have come across a copy of Edna Stuart Lee's Thirty Fox Trot Steps (New York, 1916).  This is by far the largest single collection of 1910 foxtrot step sequences I've ever found in one place, and many of them are completely new to me.

Lee's sequences were billed as "suitable for the ballroom, gymnasium, or playground, as well as for private exercise at home, either with or without a partner."  While several of them match foxtrot variations that I've previously discussed, they're given a poetic new set of names.  Can anyone guess which common sequences Lee endows with names like the Meditation Glide, Barcarolle, and Viola Dana?

The Rye Hesitation

Five years ago I posted a description of the late nineteenth-century Rye Waltz, a simple sequence dance set to a special version of "Coming Through the Rye" that alternates between duple and triple (waltz) meter. 

In 1914, Oklahoma City dancing master M. W. Cain submitted a new version of the dance, the Rye Hesitation, to F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad.  Cain's version is extremely simple, well-suited to beginning dancers.  It requires no actual waltzing; the waltz music segment is occupied by one-to-the-bar hesitation steps.

(At left, the dancers dip in the final step of the Rye Hesitation.  Click to enlarge.)

The Twinkle Hesitation Waltz

Like the similarly-named Twinkle Hesitation and the Mistletoe Hesitation, the Twinkle Hesitation Waltz is a sixteen-bar hesitation waltz sequence found in F. Leslie Clendenen's compilation Dance Mad (St. Louis, 1914) that uses the quick step-change-step known as a "twinkle".  Clendenen attributes it to T. MacDougall.  It can be used as a sequence dance to any fast 1910s waltz music, or the two parts can be used together or separately as variations in a regular hesitation waltz.

The dancers start in a normal ballroom hold, opened out to side by side facing line of dance.  Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

The waltz step used would be the box-shaped "new waltz" of the era rather than the fast-spinning rotary waltz of the nineteenth century.

Part One
1b    Step forward left
1b    Step forward right
1b    Step back left
1b    Twinkle by stepping back right to close feet on (1) and forward again left (3)
1b    Step forward right
1b    Step forward left
1b    Step back right
1b    Twinkle by stepping back left to close feet on (1) and forward again right (3)
(Turn to face each other, beginning to swing around clockwise to put the gentleman's back to line of dance)

Part Two
1b    Step left backward (lady forward) along line of dance
1b    Half-turn of reverse (counter-clockwise) waltz, right-left-right (back-side-close)
(Gentleman is now facing line of dance; continue the momentum of the reverse turn into the next two bars)
1b    Step left forward, pivoting a half-turn counter-clockwise
(Gentleman now has his back to line of dance, or close to it; the half-turn can be completed on the next step)
1b    Step right backward and dip (lady lunges forward); rise on (3) to prepare for next step
4b    Repeat all of above

Both the reconstruction and the dance itself are very straightforward.  The sequence and its component parts are easy enough to enter and exit from a regular hesitation waltz that no further explanation seems necessary.

The Hesitation Undercut

The hesitation undercut is so short that it seems more a variation for the hesitation waltz than a distinct dance.  F. Leslie Clendenen, in his 1914 collection Dance Mad, attributes it to S. Wallace Cortissoz, who was also credited in Dance Mad with a sixteen-bar sequence called the Twinkle Hesitation.

The eight-bar sequence is begun with the dancers in normal waltz position, the gentleman facing the wall and the lady the center of the room.  Steps are given below for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite. 

The waltz step used would have been the "new" waltz step, with a pattern of step-side-close, much like today's box step, rather than the older rotary-style waltz of the nineteenth century.

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. 

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 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.

The Norma Waltz and the Newman Family

In A Complete Practical Guide to Modern Society Dancing (Philadelphia, 1903), dancing master Albert W. Newman, billed as the President of Newman's Normal School and Academy of Dancing, published a short waltz sequence that fits neatly into the late-nineteenth-century development of what would eventually come to be called hesitation waltz. 

The Norma Waltz uses the same elements as appeared variously in a trio of dances described in M. B. Gilbert's Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890): the Military Waltz, Le Metropole, and the Gavotte Glide: the sideways slide and close; the step (or leap) and hop, and the turning waltz.

The sequence itself is very simple.  The dancers start in normal closed ballroom position, with the gentleman facing the nearest wall and the lady facing the center of the room.  Steps below are given for the gentleman; the lady dances opposite.

Norma Waltz (8 bars)
1b    Slide left foot to second (1), slowly close right foot to third (2, 3)
1b    Repeat slide and close
    (release joined hands and open up side by side in "military" position)
1b    Step left foot forward to fourth (1), raise right foot in front (2), hop on left (3)
1b    Repeat, stepping and hopping on right foot with left foot raised
    (gentleman swings in front of lady, his back to line of dance; take waltz position)
4b    Turning waltz
    (underturn on fourth bar to end with gentleman facing the wall ready to restart) 

Newman was a consistent partisan of the "new waltz" of the late nineteenth century rather than the older style, though he describes it as a series of steps rather than the lively leaps and cuts of the late nineteenth century.  One may presume that this is the waltz intended.

The only instruction for music is, simply, "Waltz music".  A "Norma Waltz", attributed to Johann Strauss, was published in the nineteenth century, but I've been unable to locate it on any official list of Strauss' works.  It appeared in an 1855 music catalog, and period sheet music for it survives, as well as in modern settings.  A digital interpretation may be heard here.  I am not particularly convinced that the Norma Waltz sequence is necessarily associated with this piece, though, given the vagueness of the music note.

While I've taught the Norma Waltz as an introductory hesitation waltz, I probably wouldn't have bothered writing it up if not for the interesting window it opened on the Newman family in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

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."

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Harvard Dip

I've been spending some quality time in Harvard's library lately, which reminded me of this little waltz variation by Melvin Ballou Gilbert, author of Round Dancing.  The original instructions may be seen at left; click the image to enlarge.

The Harvard Dip was published in Gilbert's magazine of dance, etiquette, and exercise, The Director, in September, 1898.  I have never seen it published elsewhere, and suspect it was purely a dancing-school variation.  The name appears to be a commercial gimmick; there is no obvious connection to Harvard other than perhaps Gilbert's desire to attract that university's students to his summer dance classes in Boston.

Gilbert earns no credit for originality with the Harvard Dip.  The first half of the eight-bar sequence exactly mimics his Brooklyn colleague H. Fletcher Rivers' "Le Metropole", with four bars of alternating slides sideways along the line of dance and half-turns of waltz.  The second part consists of the second, third, and fourth bars of Indianapolis dancing master D. R. Brenneke's "Fascination" plus a bar of waltz at the end to round out the musical phrase and set up the opposite-foot repeat.  Both "Le Metropole" and "Fascination" were included in Round Dancing.

This reshuffling of the same basic elements of late nineteenth-century American waltz variations makes the Harvard Dip a shining example of the desperate flailing of dancing masters attempting to generate new material in the face of the decline in interest in most of the old nineteenth century dance repertoire.  That does not make it any worse (or better) than many other variations of this era, so should you wish to dance it, here's how to do it:

Starting the Waltz, Dodworth Style

Sometimes very brief instructions provide more information about ballroom practice than one would expect. 

Speaking of the "new waltz" of the late nineteenth century, New York City dancing master Allen Dodworth wrote in  his 1885 manual, Dancing and its relations to education and social life (link is to the 1900 edition), the following suggestion about starting the waltz:

To begin the waltz with the leap is somewhat awkward, and for that reason many dancers adopt the following excellent expedient:

Immediately upon taking position for waltzing, the gentleman slides the left foot, occupying two of the three notes of the measure; at the third, a change is made from the left to the right foot, leaving the left elevated for the leap which follows; with these two movements the gentleman places himself in front of the lady, so that his first leap may be backward. At the same time the lady makes a very short slide with the right, then a change to the left foot, raising the right preparatory to the first forward leap, which occurs simultaneously with the gentleman's backward leap.

It must not be forgotten that a waltz is written in phrases of two bars each, the lady beginning each phrase with the right, the gentleman with the left foot; as the foregoing method of starting requires but one bar, it is necessary to wait for the second bar of a phrase before beginning.

The move is easy enough to reconstruct; the dancers wait for one bar (three counts), then the dancers slide their first foot (gentleman's left, lady's right) (1-2) and cut with their second foot (3), turning a quarter clockwise so that the lady faces line of dance and the gentleman has his back to line of dance.  They are then ready with their first foot (still elevated from the cut) to leap along the line of dance for the first step of the waltz. 

But Dodworth gives us more here than just the dance instructions.  Offering a fix reveals what the problem was that he thought needed one.

Late Victorian Waltz Variations: Fascination

Fascination is another of the myriad minor waltz variations given by dancing master M. B. Gilbert, in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), who includes the dance "by permission of D. B. Brenneke", presumably the creator.  It is essentially a longer and slightly more complex elaboration on the Gavotte Glide.

Gilbert's description reads:

First Part:--Slide left foot to side (2d), 1, 2; draw right to left, placing weight on right, 3; one measure. Repeat one measure. Slide left to side, 1, 2; draw right to left and slide left to side (chassé), & 3; one measures. Draw right to left and slide left to side, & 1, 3; draw right to left, placing weight on right. 3; one measure.

Second Part:--Waltz four measures. Recommence at first part.

Counterpart for lady.

The dancers are in standard waltz position, the gentleman facing the wall.  The lady dances the same moves on opposite feet.

The reconstruction is not particularly difficult; two slow slides along the line of dance, followed by a faster sequence of slides, followed by waltzing.  The gentleman's steps are given below the lady dances on opposite feet.

First Part (four bars)
1,2       Slide left foot sideways (second position) along line of dance
3          Close right to left
1,2       Slide left foot sideways along line of dance
3          Close right to left

1,2       Slide left foot sideways along line of dance
&3       Close right to left (&), sliding left sideways (3)
&1,2    Close right to left (&), sliding left sideways (1,2)
3          Close right to left, turning a quarter clockwise to place gentleman's back to line of dance

Second Part (four bars)
Waltz two complete turns, underturning at end to leave gentleman facing the wall.

The waltz would be the lively, leaping waltz described in Gilbert, rather than the earlier style common in the mid-nineteenth century.

[George] Washington Lopp, whose La Danse (Paris, 1903) translates much of Gilbert into French, with some additional material added, gives a virtually identical description of the dance, helpfully adding a metronome count of 184, the same count he assigns the regular waltz of the era.  Lopp calls this waltz the Boston (and describes the second part of the Fascination as four measures of Boston), but the description is that of Gilbert's Glide Waltz: the same waltz pattern done entirely gliding rather than with the leaps and cuts of Gilbert's waltz.  This difference is common across Lopp's descriptions of Gilbert's variations.  I would interpret it to mean that in Paris in the early 20th century, the common method of waltzing was to glide rather than leap, and that the Fascination was performed differently than it had been in America in the late 1880s.

La Russe

I picked La Russe out some time ago while looking for easy late nineteenth century waltz-time variations.  The name means "the Russian woman", and I recently had the pleasure of teaching it in Moscow to a very talented group of Russian dancers.

No specific choreographer is known for La Russe, but we can date it with unusual precision to just over 130 years ago.  Dancing master M. B. Gilbert, in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890), noted that it was "introduced by the American Society of Professors of Dancing, New York, May 1st, 1882," and it turns up in a couple of other American dance manuals of the 1880s.  All the descriptions are quite consistent, though the terminology used varies.

The English Liked to Waltz

A telegraph from London updates Americans on the early twentieth-century dance scene in London:

Waltz Popular in London

    London, Jan. 2. -- The lancers, quadrille, polka, and mazurka, once popular dances, have now almost disappeared from the ball programmes of fashionable London.  The American two-step to some extent has taken the place of the polka, but the dance most in favor is the waltz, which, according to an Italian expert, the English people seem to dance like persons in a dream, so slowly is the time usually taken.

    --- The New York Times, January 3, 1909

English dance teachers felt that this state of affairs called for high-level assistance, as a later article alerts New Yorkers:

Thinks Waltz Overdone
English Teachers Want King to Lead in Introducing Other Dances

    London, March 13. -- R. N. Compton, President of the Imeperial Society of Dance Teachers, has appealed to the king to assist the movement for breaking the exclusive popularity of the waltz.  He says:

    "If the King would command that one new dance be included in the programme of each State ball he would set a vogue for all the ballrooms of the kingdom.  The mazurka, schottische, polka, and waltz cotillion all have their places in a properly balanced programme, and on such occasions of ceremony as a State ball arranged in honor of some distinguished visitor I would suggest that some one should arrange to provide dances of a former period, as was done at the ball given by the Kaiser in Berlin in honor of the King.  The gavotte, minuet, and pavane suggest themselves, and, in addition, a new dance which would become the dance of the year."

    The last State ball, on July 10, was made up as follows: Waltzes, 10; quadrilles, 3; polkas, 2; galops, 1.  Mr. Compton suggests instead: Waltzes, 6; quadrilles, 2; polkas, 2; mazurka, 1; polonaise, 1; schottische, 1 or 2; two-step, 1; waltz-minuet, 1; and a new dance, 1.

    --- The New York Times, March 14, 1909

Top-down dictation of dance popularity has never worked out all that well, and within a few years most of these dances -- with the notable exception of the waltz -- would be thoroughly out of favor as the new ragtime dances became popular.

Also notice that Mr. Compton quietly slid a waltz-minuet into his suggested ball programme.  I'm sure the fact that he choreographed a waltz-minuet of his own had nothing to do with this...

Both articles are  © The New York Times, though 1909 articles would be out of copyright in the U.S. by now.  Click the article titles to be taken to the original articles in the invaluable The New York Times archive.

The Newport

A new waltz or redowa variation pops up in a few of the manuals of the very late nineteenth century.  Presumably named after the wealthy resort town, the Newport appears in slightly different versions in different manuals, but the common element appears to be a series of quick sliding steps.

A Waltz Minuet

In the late nineteenth century, short dance sequences came into vogue, combining couple dancing with simple figures.  Among these were more than one attempt to merge a romanticized version of the eighteenth-century minuet with the waltz.  These "waltz minuets" bore no particular resemblance to their minuet namesakes, lacking the "Z" pattern of the true minuet or any real attempt at proper steps. 

In 1890, M.B. Gilbert published in his Round Dancing (Portland, Maine, 1890) a waltz minuet choreography consisting of a sixteen-bar "minuet" pattern alternating with sixteen bars of waltz.  The sequence is given below.  The first section is quite slow, with only one step or movement per bar of music.  The dancers start with right hands joined and both begin with the right foot.

1b    Slide right foot foward
1b    Close left foot to third position behind, bending the knees
1b    Slide left foot backward
1b    Close right foot to left in third position, bending the knees
2b    Walk around each other two steps (right, left)
2b    Bring feet together, drop hands, and bow/courtesy to partner over both measures
8b    Repeat all of the above joining left hands and beginning with the left foot
16b  Take closed position and waltz

Total: 32 bars of waltz music; repeat dance as needed to fill out music.

The first four bars are noted by Gilbert as being the "Pas minuet," though no baroque dancer would so label them.  The bringing of the feet together is not clearly spelled out, but it would make sense to simply close up the right foot to the left.  The waltz would be that described by Gilbert, the lively turning "leap-slide-cut" of the late nineteenth century.

A lovely little video of dancers Thomas Baird and Cheryl Stafford performing Elizabeth Aldrich's reconstruction of this waltz minuet may be viewed courtesy of the Library of Congress here.

1930s Waltz Variations: The Pivot Spin

This move comes from an undated source, a short pamphlet called The Dancing Master, by K.E. Graham, "as approved and recommended by the leading teacher of ballroom dancing Santos Casani," published in London.  Casani was active at least from the late 1920s onward, but the long, bias-cut style of the evening dress on the cover suggests to me that this source is from the 1930s.

Only four waltz variations are included in the pamphlet, and three of them are the standard natural turn, revese turn, and "change step," meaning a waltz forward along line of dance, all in the "new waltz" pattern of the late nineteenth-century, step-side-close, which is by the 1930s established in England as the standard ballroom style. 

The only unusual move included is the pivot spin, in which the dancers first pivot quickly clockwise then suddenly reverse direction and end facing in the opposite direction from which they started.  Specifically, on count one the gentleman steps straight back left along the line of dance, followed by pivoting clockwise to step right forward along line of dance then left backward.  He then steps backward on the righ foot towards the center of the room, turning a quarter counter-clockwise, then turns another quarter to step left along line of dance, followed by closing the right foot with weight.  The gentleman is then ready to step forward with the left foot.  The whole sequence could be regarded as a particularly elaborate method of changing the direction the dancers are facing.