Extracted from
Historic Dance X - 1875-1900 by John Gardiner-Garden. None of this text may be reproduced without permission.
All dances (and their musical scores) in bold below are discussed in detail in John's books, which may be seen in greater detail and ordered from
http://www.earthlydelights.com.au/books-cds/shop. John is happy to discuss his research with you by email
garden@earthlydelights.com.au or phone (02) 62811098 and is happy to travel to teach these dances in Australia and overseas and is often accompanied by historically costumed dancers and musicians for display and learning purposes.
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Dances, both old and new, filled
the four main Australian-published manuals that have survived from the last
quarter of the 19th century. These manuals are remarkable for the diversity of
the dances they described—and thus which were to some degree or other
presumably being taught, if all equally danced socially. Although I will treat
these books descriptions of particular dances at much greater length in my
entries on some of the dances they mention, I might here do a quick survey of
the contents of all four. The five sources are E.J. Wivell,
The Ballroom
Companion, Adelaide, c.1874-1882, Roberts,
Manual of Fashionable Dances, Melbourne, 1875 (and later editions),
Mrs Charles Read,
Australian Ballroom
Guide, Sydney, 1876 (and later editions), J.H. Christison,
A Manual of Dancing and Etiquette,
Maitland, 1882, and R. Lovenberry
, The
Australian M.C. or Dancers Enquire Within, Brisbane, 1884, and I have put
in bold those titles under which I have entries in Part 4 of this
Volume.
All the sources
offer a standard quadrille set. Wivell offers a ‘Quadrille’, the Roberts a
‘Quadrille Français, or First Set’, Read ‘The most popular Quadrilles’ or
Paine’s First Set, or Real English Quadrille’, Chirstison the ‘Quadrille’ and
Lovenberry a ‘
Quadrille Français Or First Set’ (see my entry under the former title in
Volume VII) in both a ‘club’ version with a galop finale
and in a ballroom version without the galop. Read and Lovenberry also offer a version in a column ‘The Parisian
Quadrille’ and ‘Parisians’. See
Quadrille Français (4) in
Volume IX.
Both Wivell and Lovenberry offer a version in a square with all moving
together, respectively called ‘Coulon
or double Quadrille’ or ‘Coulon Quadrille’.
See my entry on the
Coulon Double
Quadrille in
Volume IX. Lovenberry also offers the ‘Royal Irish Quadrilles or Hibernians’ in both
club and ballroom form—effectively the First set to Irish music.
All the sources
offer a standard 4 couple square set Lancers, with Lovenberry offering both a
club and ballroom version. Roberts, Read and Lovenberry also offer a version
done with 2 couples on each side of the square. Roberts and Read call it a ‘
Double Lancers’ and Lovenberry ‘Lancers
for Sixteen’ (see my entry on the dance in
Volume IX). Read also offer ‘The New
Lancers’ and Lovenberry ‘Second
Set Of Lancers’.
All the sources
offer the
Caledonians (presented in
Volume VII), ‘Prince Imperiale’ or
Prince
Imperial Quadrille or in Lovenberry simply ‘Imperials’ (in club and
ballroom form—presented in Part 4 of this
Volume) and Roberts and Lovenberry
both offer a
Varieties Parisiennes
(Lovenberry calling it simply ‘La Parisiennes’—see entry in
Volume IX), and a
mazurka/mazourka quadrille which echoes my
Mazurka
Quadrille (2) (see
Volume VIII). In addition Wivell has a ‘Kent Quadrille’,
Read ‘The Queen’s First Set’, ‘Paine Third Set’, ‘The Windsor Castle Quadrille’
and Lovenberry the ‘Alberts’,
‘Fitzroys’, ‘Brisbane Quadrilles’, ‘Spanish Waltz Quadrilles’, ‘Moscovian Waltz
Quadrilles’, ‘Cambrians, Or Welsh Quadrilles’, ‘A Quadrille des Dames (Or
Ladies Choose Your Partners)’, ‘A Polka Quadrille’ and ‘The Albions Waltz
Quadrille’, and Christison has ‘The Queen’s Quadrille’, ‘Another way of the
Quadrille’, ‘Another Quadrille’ and his own choreography,
Le Quadrille de
Jean Gilles (presented in Part 4 of this
Volume).
When it comes to
country dances, all the sources offer a
Sir Roger De Coverley (see
various versions in various Volumes),
Roberts and Lovenberry ‘Long Live
the Queen’. Wivell and Lovenberry offer ‘The Princess Royal’ and ‘the
Mescalanze’ or ‘Mescolanze waltz’. In addition, Wivell offers ‘The Victoria’ and ‘The Albert’, and
Lovenberry offers
Pop Goes The Weasel, ‘Dashing White Sergeant’, ‘Polka Country Dance’, ‘Rory O’More’, ‘Prince
Albert’s Dance’, ‘La Minuette (French Contre Dance)’,
Triumph (see
Volume VIII), ‘British Grenadiers’, ‘Romany Rhy (Gypsy Dance)’, ‘Torrieburn
Lassies’, ‘Meg Merrilees’, ‘Petronella’, ‘Queen’s Welcome’, ‘Flowers Of
Edinburgh’, ‘[
La]
Boulangere (French Contre Dance)’ (see Volume
VII),
‘Le Carillon [
de Dunkerque] (French Contre Dance)’ and
‘A
Norwegian Country Dance’ (for the last two see
Volume IX).
When it comes to the
hybrids that crossed quadrille figures with country dance progressions all the
sources (bar Christison) have a Spanish Dance or
Spanish Waltz (as
Robert’s and Lovenberry call it—see my entries in
Volume VIII) with Wivell’s,
Roberts’ and Read’s version being closer to my version
(1) and
Lovenberry’s closer to my version
(2)—both discussed in
Volume VIII. All
the sources have a
La Tempete, with Christison also offering a variant he calls ‘La Gursa’, and all
bar Read have
The Circassian Circle,
with Christison offering the most common variant (it being but a progressive
form of the first figure of the Caledonians—see
Volume IX) but saying there are
about 20 variants and with Lovenberry offering 9 versions.
When it comes to
reels and jigs, all bar Read and Christison offer a
Scotch Reel (see my entry in
Volume VII) or
Highland Reel (see my entry in this Volume), and all bar Roberts
have a ‘Reel of Tulloch’. Lovenberry also has a ‘New Highland Reel’ and an ‘Irish Jig’. Christison may have omitted these
dances because, as an accomplished Scottish step-dancer he may have believed
that to give these dances their due they needed more tuition than that he could
offer in his book.
When it comes to
polkas and galops, all sources have entries on ‘The
Polka’ or the
‘Original Polka’ as Lovenberry calls it (see my entry in
Volume VIII). All the
sources bar Lovenberry have a dance close to my
Galop (1) in
Volume VIII
or
(2) in
Volume IX, Wivell and Roberts under the title ‘The Galop’ and Read under ‘Galopade, or Le Galop’, and all bar Wivell have a ‘Danish Waltz’
similar to my
Galop (4) / Manchester in this
Volume. Two sources have crosses between the galop and the polka, Read a
‘Coquette. Nouvelle danse de Salon’ and Lovenberry a ‘Melbourne Polka’ and
‘Polka Galop’ (the former involving a 1½ turn, the later just a ½ turn), all
like versions of my
Esmeralda (1) in
Volume IX and my
Coquette (3)
and
(4) in
Volume X. Lovenberry also has a ‘German Finger Polka’ which
is the same as my
Baby Polka in this
Volume, and a ‘Heel and Toe Polka’
the same as my
Bohemian Polka in
Volume IX.
When it comes to
schottisches, all describe the basic dance, Wivell and Roberts under ‘
The
Schottische’ (see
VolumeIX), Read under ‘The German Schottische’, Chistison under ‘The Plain
Schottische’ and Lovenberry under ‘Original Schottische’. All bar Wivell also have a
Highland Schottische
(see
Volume X), which all bar Read also call ‘The Balmoral’. Read and
Lovenberry also have a recognisable though cryptic description of
The
Gorlitza (see
Volume IX), while Chistison refers to the dance ‘as the same
as the Polka, the figures being waltzed throughout... a teacher must be
consulted before you can do justice to this dance’. Lovenberry also has a
‘Prince Of Wales Schottische’.
When it comes to
waltzes all have an entry on the
Vals à trois temps, but while Wivell, Roberts’ and Read’s
versions equate with Lovenberry’s ‘Common Waltz’ (like the
Vals à trois temps (1) presented in
Volume VIII without the
swivel), Lovenberry’s
Vals-a-trois temps
is with the ‘new step’ and equates with the
Glide Waltz which I present under
Waltz (5) in this
Volume. All sources have entries on the
Valse-a-deux Temps (presented in
Volume VIII), with Read giving it the alternate name of ‘Quick Waltz’. Roberts and
Lovenberry also offer entries on ‘La Sauteuse’ which the former also calls ‘New
Spring Waltz’ and the later
The Hop Waltz (presented in
Volume IX). Lovenberry also offers an entry on ‘The New
Waltz’ or ‘La Nouvelle Volta’ which equates to my
Newport in
Volume X.
Christison offers a description and discussion of both the
Vals
à trois temps and
Vals à deux temps under a heading ‘The
Waltz’.
When it comes to
relatives of the Mazurka all the sources have cognate descriptions of the
Polka
Mazurka or Polka Mazourka as some spell it (see
Volume IX). All bar Read
and Christison also offer a
The Redowa or
Redowa Waltz (see my
entries in Volume IX and
X), and all have a Varsovianna—Read and Christison
offer a 3 part version echoing my
La Varsovienne / The Varsovianna
(3) and Lovenberry offers a 2 part version echoing my
La Varsovienne /
The Varsovianna (2)—both in
Volume IX.
All bar Read and
Christison offer a
Waltz-Mazurka, but where Wivell starts his ‘Mazurka Vals’ with a glide and is in two parts [my version
(2) in
Volume IX],
Roberts offers a ‘Waltz Mazurka,
called the Cellarius’ which
starts with a hop and is in 3 parts, my version
(1) in
Volume VIII, and
Lovenberry offers both a hop-glide-hop ‘Cellarius Waltz’ and a glide-hop-hop
‘Waltz Mazurka’.
When it comes to
cotillions, Christison offers the ‘Waltz Cotillion’, Wivell and Read are silent
and Roberts and Lovenberry use the term very differently. Roberts offers 26
figures of what he calls ‘the New Cotillion’. They are all dance games, all
taken from Cellarius 1847 manual and many are discussed in my sections on
Cotillion in Part 4 of
Volume VIII. Lovenberry offers description of about 10
‘Cotillons’ but they are not dance games for as many as will so much as hybrids
between couples dance and quadrilles, usually involve only 4 couples, and are
all very different from those dances Cellarius or Roberts offered under this heading.
His include
Cotillon L’eventail (presented in this
Volume), ‘The Russian Cotillon’, ‘Polka Cotillon’, ‘La
Sarabande Waltz Cotillon’, ‘Cotillon Tyrolienne’, ‘Castilian Dance’, ‘Cachouca
Cotillon (Spanish Gypsy Dance)’, ‘New Cachouca (La Gitana)’, ‘La Petite Minuet’
and ‘The Garland Dance’. Most are more like the dance I presented in
VolumeVIII under
Waltz Cotillion than any of the dance games presented under
Cotillion in Volume
VII or
X.
When it comes to
more exotic dances, Read offers a description of a Minuet which would seem to
be a version of my
Minuet de la Cour (2)
offered in
Volume X, Christison offers a ‘Minuet’ which he ascribes to
Novarre and which is different in its detail from any in this Volume, and
Lovenberry offers an accurate description of the original
Minuet de la Cour (presumably taken from Coulon’s description
presented in
Volume VI). Roberts has an entry on
Polonais,
a dance
discussed in several of my Volumes, and Lovenberry has a ‘Bolero’ which
combines sol percussing and dancing, with group chaining.
Here then, in these 5 books, we
have all the same dances which masters were describing in books in England
(indeed, the repertoire and wording is much closer to English publications than
American). It is particular interesting to note that this repertoire included
even such exotic dances as the minuet, and that both Mrs Reid in her book and
other masters in their dance class advertisements, state that the Minuet was a
dance being taught in classes. We should not underestimate the standard which
dancing masters were trying to achieve in their academies. We should not,
however, overestimate the standard or diversity of repertoire being achieved at
large social occasions. From surviving ball cards and from illustrations, we
can see that this was a much narrower range of dances than that surveyed above.
