John Sweeney raises an interesting point about the differences in styling
between 19th century quadrilles (Tony Parkes's definition 1) and the phrased
New England squares of today (Tony's definition 3), whether the latter have the
word "Quadrille" in their titles or not.
Where today's dancers would to courtesy turns, or replace them with twirls and
other embellishments, 19th-century dance manuals prescribe a simple turn by the
left hand. The word "swing" was used to describe a two-hand turn, or sometimes
other figures such as a right-hand or left-hand turn or a circle, but certainly
not something done in the closed ballroom-like position we generally use for
swings today. Also, if I understand correctly, where we generally use a simple
walking step for most square dance figures other than "balance" and "swing",
dancers in the early 19th century were taught more elaborate footwork. (My
impression is that later in 19th century, the fancy footwork became less
common, though some dancing masters may have objected to that trend. However,
I haven't looked carefully through available books of the period to check the
trends in what people were writing, much less do I know how well what appeared
in the books of any decade corresponded to what dancers were actually doing.)
John lists a number of dances with "Quadrille" in their titles and writes of
them:
> But they are all just square dances. None of them bear any
> resemblance to an actual Quadrille. A few like Western Quadrille are based
> on one figure of an actual Quadrille, but with modern styling.
>
> It’s a nice word and sounds good in a dance title. :-)
Those remarks apply at least as much to my own "Wardwell Quadrille" series as
to any of the other dances on John's list. I used the word "Quadrille" in the
titles simply because I thought it sounded good in combination with "Wardwell"
("Wardwell Hall" being the former name of the church social hall used by the
BACDS San Francisco contra dance series). I didn't at all imagine the dances
being done in an especially elegaaahnt style, and my preferred music would be
old-time reels, not the 6/8 tunes of Tony's definition 4 of "quadrille" nor the
sort of orchestral music used for those Viennese "quadrilles" that I referenced
in an earlier message.
--Jim
On Feb 23, 2020, at 3:24 AM, John Sweeney via Contra Callers
<contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> Calling something a Quadrille doesn't necessarily make it a Quadrille.
>
> To me the King's Quadrille is just a modern American square dance.
>
> It doesn't have the styling or the moves or the length/complexity of a
> Quadrille (e.g. I don't believe that courtesy turns existed in the period
> when Quadrilles were danced).
>
> The only commonality is that it is done by four couples in a Square.
>
> On checking, I find that I have the following in my deck:
> Festival Quadrille
> The Hawk Quadrille
> Buffalo Quadrille
> Camille's Quadrille
> Queen's Quadrille (same as King's but the moves are straight across instead
> of to the right) - also known as "The Quiet Square"
> Easy Does it Quadrille
> Knave's Quadrille
> Karen's Quadrille
> Western Quadrille
> Wardwell Quadrille
> Colonial's Quadrille
> Farmer's Quadrille
>
> Hmm... I hadn't realised that there were so many!
>
> But they are all just square dances. None of them bear any
> resemblance to an actual Quadrille. A few like Western Quadrille are based
> on one figure of an actual Quadrille, but with modern styling.
>
> It’s a nice word and sounds good in a dance title. :-)
>
> Happy dancing,
> John
<snip>
_______________________________________________
Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net
