COLONIAL DANCE

A Measure of Civility From: “Dances of Colonial America” by Charles Cyril Hendrickson and Kate Van Winkle Keller on the website ofThe Colonial Music Institute

Colonial Dance

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“In the 18 th century, dance events were one of the few venues that brought men and women together in a social setting.”

Two Levels of Dance

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We tend to think of Colonial dance as very formal with precise steps But there were really two levels of dance:

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Formal – as performed in ballrooms and on social occasions among the upper and middle classes, mainly in urban areas

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Country dance – performed by all dancers, but the main dance in rural areas and on plantations

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These distinctions were very much related to social standing In urban areas where there were definite social class levels, “the test of a gentleman was whether he had the time to absorb the mounting intricacies of taste, grace, fashion and elegance.” Frontier and plantation communities were small and tightly knit – everyone knew everyone else with no need to “one-up” each other . . .

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. . .Dancing after community corn-husking certainly helped the romances of young people who spent their days on

The Business of Dance

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“Dance fashions were set by cultivated urban societies as expressions of social status.” And, as with any situation where you need to make a good impression, practice makes perfect.

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Dance professionals devised dances that displayed the performers to best advantage AND . . . . . .

Composers wrote new tunes Printers developed increasingly

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“Dancing teachers reaped financial gains from . . . public classes, private lessons, and pre ball review events.” Were lessons important? Check out this 1774 ad of William Turner who had just returned from London where he gathered the latest dance fashions and offered private lessons . . .

“. . . to grown gentlemen and ladies, & assures the utmost secrecy shall be kept till they are capable of exhibiting in high taste.”

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And as the cost of printed instructions went down, a willing public bought them eagerly.

“The figures of over 25,000 dances were published with their music in English books between 1700 and 1830 and many more in Ireland and Scotland and Holland.” “The figures of over 2,800 dances appear in American collections handmade or published between 1730 and 1820 . . . most of English origin or inspiration . . . several direct copies of

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“In the 18 th century, dance was meant to be enjoyed as much by the audience as by the participants.

“Taste and gentility were sought after and acquired after diligent application and validated only by open demonstration.

“Life, in a way, was theater. It needed a setting, props and an audience, and it was full of aspiring imitators.

“Rules and standards helped to distinguish the genuine article from the counterfeit.”

The Dances – The Minuet

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“The menuet ordinaire or ballroom minuet was the chief dance of ceremony and ritual.

“Devised in the 1660’s for the French court, it was a dramatic and powerful dance.

“Using one of several standard step sequences and a specific floor pattern, it left some latitude for individualization through ornamentation.

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“Alone on the floor with their concentration on each other and moving with four steps in six beats, two dancers move on a symmetrical track using the entire dance space.

“Honors to partner and the company open and close the dance.

“The remainder of the dance consists of parallel passes across the floor and one- and two-hand turns.

“The minuet became a ritual of the ballroom for the entire 18 th century.

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“A symbol of power, the first minuet was performed by the leading man and most important lady present while the rest of the company watched.

“It served to remind everyone of his or her position within the group.

“In America, minuets opened most formal occasions; the Governor, senior military officer, leading merchant, or the host of the event dancing with the most senior ladies present.”

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It was a very formal affair and there are accounts of frightened dancers,

The Dances – Country Dance

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So it was no wonder that everyone relaxed when the minuets were over and the country dances could begin.

Country dance is the best documented group dance of the period.

The dance was arranged for “as many couples as will” standing in lines, partner facing partner.

And, despite the informal-sounding name, country dances were not undisciplined romps.

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Democratic rather than hierarchical, in each country dance the leading couple performs the figure and is then in second place and repeats the figures with the next one or two couples.

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This progression continues down through the entire line and back up, until the leading couple is again at the top and each couple has had a turn leading the dance.

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The top couple in the set selected the dance They had to know how the figures fit the music and were also responsible

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The Minuet and Country Dance were by far the most popular, but “several other types of dance appeared in early American ballrooms, promoted by dancing masters to hold their pupils’ interest and by fashionable dancers who wished to keep one step ahead of the crowd.”

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The Dances - Cotillion

In the 1680’s, possibly inspired by the English country dance, French dancing masters developed another type of country dance, terming it contredanse.

For the next 100 years, the English longways progressive dance – with increasingly simpler figures – became the favorite of middle class ballrooms; The French type developed into a more and more complex, non-progressive dance, usually in closed set formation, suitable for the most elite dancers. Cotillion Video

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The French dance was not widely fashionable at first until the 1760’s when La Cuisse perfected a system of depicting the figures graphically thus allowing these complex and interesting figures to appear in print.

Almost immediately English dancers adopted a fairly basic type of French contredanse, the cotillon, anglicized as “cotillion.” It was usually performed in a square of four couples.

It consisted of a number of standard verses called “changes” followed by a chorus that was distinctive to that

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The changes were movements such as circles, hand-turns, hands-across, allemande turns and rights-and-lefts (chain).

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The figure, or chorus, was repeated after each change. There could be 8 or 10 changes in a cotillion.

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They used steps similar to country dance steps, but in more complex combinations

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And who benefited from these new dances?

The dancing masters whose services had been less in demand with country

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It is interesting that the longways English country dance type has remained in use to the present in New England, having been fashionable when much of that area was settled.

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In contrast, the cotillion was at its height of fashion in urban ballrooms between 1780 and 1820, when many Europeans came to America and many others left for lands over the mountains . . .

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. . . thus the cotillion was carried west and became the basis of traditional American square dancing – and far

The Dances – Hornpipes and Jigs

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Hornpipes and jigs also came from the new French style and the names were used interchangeably in the beginning.

These were free-form, display dances for one or two dancers.

These were personal routines created with step combinations and floor patterns adapted to the skills of the soloist for whom or by whom it was constructed.

It could be completely choreographed or be entirely improvisation, changing every time it was danced.

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The Dances - Reels

Another cross-cultural group dance was the Scottish reel, a dance for three or four people in a line.

Passages of footwork in place are alternated with traveling on a weaving track. Because of their informal nature, reels were usually impromptu.

Little instruction was needed to perform them although they often involved complex individual footwork displaying well developed personal skills.

While simple country dance figures like circles, hand-turns, and elbow swings were danced by lower classes, the reel was probably the group dance of choice most

The Dances – Allemandes, Gavottes, and Rigadoons

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These dances were solos or duets that were choreographed for specific dancers.

They consisted of individually designed tracks on which the dancer performed combinations of baroque dance steps.

The dances were taught in dancing schools and danced as demos or show-off dances in the ballroom or in a theater, but were not group dances.

Some of the steps used in the dances, such as the allemande and rigadoon, were occasionally used in social dances,

The Dances - Today

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The minuet remains a specific dance and music form, often danced in period costume as in this video .

The Country Dance, or English Long Dance or their cousin the Reel remain with us in their original form, but also in these updated versions:

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The Virginia Reel you probably danced in grade school gym class

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Hopefully some of you will recognize this dance from the 1950’s . . .

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Today’s line dancers are familiar with “contra lines” where dancers start in lines facing and at some point in the dance the lines meet and pass and dancers turn to face the other line again, repeating the dance steps till the music ends.

The Cotillion – as already noted – is the predecessor of our Modern Western Square Dance as evidenced by this video Hornpipes and jigs – have you been to a high school “dance” lately?

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So while we tend to picture our ancestors as very staid and proper on the dance floor, the evidence suggests that they could kick up their heels when they wanted to – and despite the passage of time, if they were to return to the dance floor today, they would, undoubtedly, see some very strange, but yet very familiar steps in our dances.