Dancing then was an accomplishment. Who does not recollect seeing some grandfather still “taking his steps”? Now at the most is permitted the Galop, which has the needed element of jollity without coarseness. It is l’allegro of the ballroom. The Gambrinus Polka also lights up the ballroom occasionally. With these vivacious exceptions, dancing is reduced to the Waltz—la valse à trois temps—the various steps of which consist of the Hop-Waltz, the Glide-Waltz, the Redowa, and the Waltz proper. The Boston “Dip,” the “Racket,” and the “Society,” are spurious. They are not taught by the best dancing masters. They are “rowdy,” but some people, desirous of notoriety, do dance them at the Charity Ball. As a famous dancing authority observes, “Did such a style of dancing prevail, dancing must go down; its enemies would have unanswerable arguments against it.” The dance of society is now quiet, easy, natural, modest, and graceful. Those who would make it otherwise must remember that they are copying the excesses of the Bal Mabille.
The spurious dances mentioned above are ridiculed in “Punch” as the “pivotal” dances. The Redowa is a pretty form of the Waltz. It is composed of a step known as the pas de basque. Its movements are indicated as a fête à glissé and a coupé dessous; the feet, however, are never raised from the floor.
The Galop is a great favorite with the Swedes, Danes, and Russians; it has a Viking force in it; while the Redowa reminds one of the graceful Viennese, who dance it so well. The Mazourka, danced to the wild Polish Mazourka measure, is a more poetical dance, and has many a poem written to its honor; but it rarely appears seen at a fancy-dress ball.
The German Cotillon, born many years ago in a Viennese palace to meet the requirements of court etiquette, is now the favorite dance at home and at balls, as a way of finishing the evening. Its favors, beginning with flowers, ribbons, and bits of tinsel, have ripened into fans, bracelets, gold scarf-pins, and pencil-cases, and many other things even more expensive. Favors now often cost $5,000 for one fashionable ball. So the German, thus conducted, can scarcely be called a Home Amusement.
To dance by the firelight to the music of the piano is a Home Amusement. And if there be a good old kitchen, with a hard floor, into which a negro fiddler can be introduced, and where the contra-danse can be also added, and the evening can end with Virginia Reel—this is a Home Amusement. The old-fashioned quadrilles, the Lancers—dances in which old and young can join—these are home dances!
“There is something so conscientious about papa’s dancing,” said a profane youth who was watching his estimable parent through the decidedly complicated mazes of Money Musk. Youth will always laugh at age when it attempts the accomplishments. That is a real dance, however, when papa, mamma, and the children all join in, and when Jane, aged seven, leads out grandpa. How Dickens luxuriates in Mr. Fizziwig’s dancing at the Christmas supper in the “Christmas Carol”! Dickens could never have made the “German” so pathetic or so funny!
All fashion polishes off the edges, and causes an aristocratic icing to form over the outside of any expression of jollity; so no wonder that fashionable dancing has become a glissé. It would not be well to attempt any gay dancing at a fashionable ball—that would look like romping; but surely in the old kitchen, in the private parlor, at Christmas, on birthdays, one is allowed to romp a little.
The German is a dance of infinite variety, and a leader of original fancy constructs new figures constantly. The Waltz, Galop, Redowa, and Polka steps occur in its many changes. There is a slow walk in the quadrille figures; a stately march; the bows and courtesies of the old minuet; and, above all, the tour de valse, which is the means of locomotion from place to place. The changeful exigencies of the various figures lead the forty or fifty or the two hundred people to meet, exchange greetings, dance with each other, change their geographical position many times; and the Grand Army of the Republic did not have a more varied scope.
The Kaleidoscope is one of the prettiest figures. The four couples perform a tour de valse, then form as for a quadrille; the next four couples in order take positions behind the first four couples, each of the latter couples facing the same as the couples in front. At a signal from the leader, the ladies of the inner couples cross right hands, move entirely round, and turn into places by giving left hands to their partners; at the same time the outer couples waltz half round to opposite places. At another signal, the inner couples waltz entirely round, and finish facing outward; at the same time the outer couples chassé croisé, and turn at corners with right hands, then dechassé, and turn partners with left hands. Valse générale with vis-à-vis.