California 1876 dances & tunes?
Dave Goldman
I received the question below from my aunt, who lives in southern
California, in the Conejo Valley north of LA. Can anybody suggest what
calls and tunes would have been typical in that era, in the West? Is there
any published material they can request from their library?
Thanks,
Merilee Karr
>I have a question for you. We have been asked to research a "Barn Dance"
that would have been held in 1876 - (for our Stagecoach Museum's "Evening
on the Conejo")
>
>We don't know if there was a real one. We are trying to re-construct how
life was here in the Conejo Valley in 1876. There were ranches & farms &
this is supposed to be how it was when the neighbors got together.
>Would you happen to know what music would be from that time? We have a
fiddler & dancers & know that simple calls would have been used.
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
Absolutely the easiest way to deal with this, if you don't have a Victorian
dancing master handy (and I could name several in California who have some
pretensions to this role, including myself; we're generally in Northern
California, though) and one that's tolerably accurate historically, is to get a
copy of "Dances of Early California Days" by Lucile K. Czarnowski, Pacific
Books, Palo Alto, California, 1950.
(The book may be somewhat difficult to find. I think the inspiration for
publishing it was the Centennial of California statehood. I got my copy
via eBay; never tried inter-library loan. There is, as far as I know, no
modern source like it.)
Czarnowski, drawing on diaries and memoirs from the late 1800s, interviews
with surviving Californio families, and observation of 'old time' dance
groups of the 1940s and earlier, cross-checked with public sources of this
period, reconstructs Spanish-inflected dances of the pre-statehood days and
English/American dances after the Gold Rush. Now, she's talking 1850, not
1876, but the general shape of a ball wouldn't change very quickly there,
although the novelty couple dance of the season would change.
She describes the dances in considerable detail, to the point where an
experienced country-dance (ECD or contra) caller can fog over, thinking the
dance is much harder than it is because there's so much explanation of what
turns out to be duple-minor progression. But this might make it very suitable
for inexperienced people, if they don't want to / can't afford to hire a
professional.
Czarnowski's sample program for "Ball after 1849":
Grand March
Schottische
Heel and Toe Polka (Santa Barbara verson)
The York
The Danish
The Lancers (quadrille, very popular 1815-1900)
Heel and Toe Polka in Jig Time
Rye Waltz
- Supper -
Mazurka from Santa Barbara
Waltz Contra
(Okay, I don't entirely believe that, and it's probably not what you want,
because it's almost all couple dances with no directly repeated types; that is,
one polka, one waltz, etc; the investment in learning how to do these dances
doesn't get a big return. But it's still all dances that had definitely been
around by 1876.
Now, _The Habits of Good Society_ by "The Gentleman in the Club Window", in
the 1870 edition I happened to look at, says that if you're having a
private ball (in England), you have so many waltzes, so many polkas, so
many galops, and seven sets of quadrilles of which no more than two should
be "The Lancers".
But if you look at the dance books published in the 1860s and 1870s, you
see that even the ones that are mostly quadrille and couple dances include
a certain number of contras, and some of them have _lots_ of contras. Now,
this doesn't mean you can just get your local contra dance caller out and
have them to an evening of duple-improper everybody-active lots-of-swinging
contras, but it makes it colourable that you might have "Lady of the Lake"
(shows up in the 1830s), "Fisher's Hornpipe", "Sackett's Harbor", "Mony
Musk", "The Coquette", "Soldier's Joy" etc, in the mix, remembering that
"balance" is an eight-count figure and "swing" is a one-hand turn or a
two-hand turn, not a ballroom style swing.) Also, cotillons (the
party game for picking partners, not the square-formation precursor to
quadrilles) are coming in at this time, and if this was a group of friends
and neighbors rather than a public ball, one might pick one of the
not-so-cruel ones that aren't all about public rejection.
Absent more information - were the Conejo Valley people ex-Spanish? Had
they all come from the Midwest? The East Coast? Scotland or Ireland? (all
of which might give some other ideas about what kind of dancing and music
they'd brought with them), and assuming that people don't want to go to
many hours of dance workshop to do the ball, I'd be inclined to put
together a program for a three-hour dance, assuming that you're going to
get mostly people who haven't danced a whole heck of a lot before, that
looked something like this, although I'd fine-tune it if I actually had
an assignment:
Grand March
Waltz
Sicilian Circle (perhaps "Soldier's Joy")
Polka
Lancers Quadrille (last figure)
Mazurka
Contra: Lady of the Lake
Waltz
- break -
Spanish Waltz (sicilian circle formation)
Polka
Haste to the Wedding (sicilian circle formation)
Waltz
Chimes of Dunkerque (double circle, men facing out, women facing in)
Galop
- break -
Polka
Sicilian circle: California Reel (Howe, 1866) [which might be a little
hard, but it looks so nice on paper] OR
Threesome Sicilian: Rustic Reel OR
Foursome Sicilian: La Tempete
Waltz
Polka Contry or Polka Quadrille or "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (per "Good
Morning")
Waltz
Contra: Chorus Jig
Cotillon: The ZigZags or The Pyramid (which can get everyone waltzing and
doesn't take any props).
-----
(This is still not completely in accord with ballroom practice of the
period: they really dug polkas, and would have done more of them; there
ought to be more quadrilley things, but they were partly popular because
people already knew all the figures, whereas you'd be fairly lucky to get
through teaching five figures of the quadrille in forty minutes. This is
all colourable as dances that had been printed before this date, some
pretty recently, should all be fun, and are all pretty accessible without
advance classes if you (a) don't drink and (b) have some clue about waltz
and polka already.)
Hope this helps!
-- Alan
Dave Goldman
- Dave Goldman
Portland, OR
Karen M.
...
> She describes the dances in considerable detail, to the point where an
> experienced country-dance (ECD or contra) caller can fog over, thinking the
> dance is much harder than it is because there's so much explanation of what
> turns out to be duple-minor progression. But this might make it very suitable
> for inexperienced people, if they don't want to / can't afford to hire a
Oh dear. A non-professional caller can't decipher obscure stuff
better than a long-timer. IMHO nothing is worse than a fancy dress
period ball, everyone expecting to have a fine old time, but the poor
newbie at the mic wanders and equivocates and gets angry (!) and takes
20 minutes explaining how to make a long-ways set.
Tell 'em to hire an experienced caller. **Please.** If they don't,
the dance will be a bust and a one-time-only event, memorable for all
the wrong reasons. "What means this 'Fan Dance?' How does it go??"
--Karen M.
There's a reason I know this...not lobbying for the gig, I'm in
Michigan!
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>Alan wrote and wrote and wrote:
Is there a word limit in the rf-d charter?
>...
>> She describes the dances in considerable detail, to the point where an
>> experienced country-dance (ECD or contra) caller can fog over, thinking the
>> dance is much harder than it is because there's so much explanation of what
>> turns out to be duple-minor progression. But this might make it very suitable
>> for inexperienced people, if they don't want to / can't afford to hire a
>> professional. ...
>
> Oh dear. A non-professional caller can't decipher obscure stuff
>better than a long-timer.
Indeed. Czarnowski is _not_ obscure; she's pellucid, but she's pellucid at
such great length that people who are used to a dance description that's four
lines on a 3x5 card think what she's describing must be a lot harder than it
actually is unless they really work through it. But if in fact they mean to
have non-professionals do it and are looking for library resources, far better
that they should have a look at Czarnowski, who is writing for a 1950 audience
that doesn't know anything about country dance and needs all the terms defined
and everything explained, than dive right into contemporary sources like Howe,
Dodsworth, etc, which will surely leave them completely baffled.
> IMHO nothing is worse than a fancy dress
>period ball, everyone expecting to have a fine old time, but the poor
>newbie at the mic wanders and equivocates and gets angry (!) and takes
>20 minutes explaining how to make a long-ways set.
Indeed, and my suggestion was meant to contain the damage if they meant to go
that way, while also including a hint that professionals are available.
-- Alan