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At the end of the nineteenth century, the growing influence of a new kind of popular music substantially changed the nature of dance. Ragtime had become a popular American style of music, chiefly composed for the piano, that flourished between 1890 and World War I. The sparkling and intoxicating rhythms of ragtime, with music by composers such as Scott Joplin, ushered in an era of expressive ballroom dancing, with dances that did not need formal training but which encouraged individualism. The first of these, the cakewalk--a strutting dance of African-American origins--with its imagined scandalous rhythms, was never performed by middle and upper class ballroom dancers in its original, vibrantly competitive form. Yet it did find its way into the stately quadrille and was, therefore, performed in some variation by a new generation of dancers.
La danse. Raoul Charbonnel. Published 1899. Page Image Viewer | Bibliographic Info. |
Balli di ieri e balli d'oggi. P. Gavina. Published 1922. Page Image Viewer | Bibliographic Info. |
In contrast, exhibition dancers Irene and Vernon Castle were everything society considered elegant and sophisticated, and they soon helped revolutionize ballroom dancing, by example, in their own dancing and by teaching private lessons. Their book, Modern dancing, was published in New York in 1914. Lavishly illustrated with photographs of the famous couple, the book provided descriptions of many of the popular ragtime dances including the tango (See Video Clip 80, Video Clip 81, and Video Clip 82),one-step (See Video Clip 74), Castle Walk (See Video Clip 75), hesitation waltz (See Video Clip 76), and the maxixe (See Video Clip 77). In attempting to bring civility back into the ballroom and in acknowledging the format of earlier dance manuals, the Castles also included chapters on "Grace and Elegance," "Proper Dancing-Costumes for Women," "Modern Dances as Fashion Reformers," and "Proper Dance Music." What the Castles had found was a dancing mania but a society that did not know how to dance. Suddenly, just as it had been one hundred years earlier, going to a dance teacher became the thing "to do."
The Castles were not alone, and dancing schools, tea dansants, and numerous publications proliferated during the early teens, giving a wide audience a chance to learn the latest steps. However, unlike the nineteenth century, where it was possible to read several manuals and find the same step description for the basic steps, in the early twentieth century every dance teacher had his or her own variations. In addition to the Castle's book, this online collection contains five additional manuals that were published in 1914. Albert W. Newman's Dances of to-day, published in Philadelphia, utilized text, drawings, a notation system, and photographs to explain the one-step, waltz, tango, and maxixe, as well as many variations for each dance.
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Troy and Margaret Kinney's Social dancing of to-day, published in New York, also described ragtime dances through text, a notation system, and photographs. Caroline Walker's The modern dances, published in Chicago covered the tango (or, one-step, according to Walker), the Castle Walk, the Walking Boston, the hesitation waltz, the dream waltz, and the Argentine tango. J. S. Hopkins's The tango and other up-to-date dances, described the one-step, tango, Brazilian maxixe, and waltz. In The tango and the new dances, Bales O'Donnell published a series of articles written by the well-known exhibition ballroom dancers Maurice and his partner, Florence Walden. As well as the standard ragtime dances, the manual contained nineteen figures for two exhibition dances, "Nights of Gladness" waltz and a dance called "La Habanera.") Taking advantage of the popularity of the tango, Eileen Swepstone published, also in 1914 The tango, a pamphlet that promised to present tango steps "shorn of crudities which caused it to be criticized."
This online collection concludes with several manuals published from 1920 to 1922 that do not reflect the popular, animated dances of the jazz era of post-World War I ballrooms. Instead, these authors wrote about "proper" dances, long since out of style. Aubrey McMahon Cree's 1920 Handbook of ball-room dancing asserted that the most popular dances were the Lame Duck Valse, one-step, foxtrot, and the Lancers (a quadrille). Charles J. Coll's 1922 Dancing made easy stated that the fashionable dances included the Carter Waltz and Schottisch Espagnole. In a series of pamphlets edited by Charles Julius Frank and published in 1922 under the title The latest method, home instruction by mail, instructions for the waltz, fox trot, and one-step were presented with diagrams, exercises, and a few simple steps.
A few sketches of the interior and work done at Foreman Hall-1894. Mrs. H.A. Foreman. Published 1894. Page Image Viewer | Bibliographic Info. |
Irine skipping rope dance. H.N. Grant. Published c1895. Page Image Viewer | Bibliographic Info. |
F. C. Nott's Stage and fancy dancing, published in Cincinnati in 1896, provided instructions for thirty steps and more than twenty fancy dances, such as "Skirt Dance," "Cloak Dance," "Minuet," and "Witches Dance." Clendenen's treatise on elementary and classical dancing, published in 1903 in Davenport, Iowa, is a comprehensive manual with photographs and drawings that covered positions, technical terms, exercises, bows and curtseys, and a section on how to teach fancy dances including the "Highland Fling," "Sailor's Hornpipe," and "20th Century Skirt Dance." Published in 1906 by a leading fashion-pattern house, the Butterick Publishing Company, Masquerades, tableaux and drills provided suggestions for costumes and hair styles, as well as instructions for conducting tableaux, poses plastiques, and the so-called living pictures; a large section was also devoted to choreographies for fancy drills. (For further reading on Ragtime dance, see the bibliography.)