English Country Dance, Part II

[Stephanie Johanesen, Founder and President of the Oregon Regency Society, continues her introduction to English Country Dance (ECD). Don't forget to check out her group at www.orregency.org. We're all feet, er, ears, Stephanie!]

A piece of ECD music can be strung together into infinity. Most pieces you buy on CD are repeated seven times. At a ball, the musicians can decide when they will end it based on how long the sets are.

Here is a link to the Duke of Kent’s Waltz (this is one of my favorite dances). It’s an mp3. It is repeated four times. Listen to it. It is simply the same piece played over and over. What gives it variety is the way each set is played by the musicians. Just listening to this music, I can tell what I am supposed to do in the dance. It has a waltz tempo. One-two-three, Two-two-three…
I made a little diagram for each group of movements that go with the dance.

Ones and Twos:
Right Hand Star (4 beats)
(First gentleman takes second lady’s hand; first lady takes second gentleman’s hand beneath)
Turn
Left Hand Star (4 beats)
(You should be back in your places).



Ones (first couple) Chassée between the twos and return (4)
(Chassée = slide step waltz while holding hands)



Ones Cast Down (4)
(Turn away over your right shoulder, outside the set and fall into the place of the twos)
Twos lead up (2)
(The twos should wait two beats after the ones cast, and then take hands and dance up into the place of the ones.)

(Note: This is where you have progressed. Note that the ones and twos have switched places.)



(Here comes the best part – balancing is a waltzy step where you take right hands and dance towards each other and back.)

Balance forward on right hand
Back (2)
Balance forward
Spin under the gentleman’s hand,
And back (2)
(You are now improper) [Editor’s Note: How delightful!]

Repeat with left hand to remedy the improper position.

Balance forward on left hand
Back (2)
Balance forward
Spin under the gentleman’s hand,
And back (2)
(You should now be proper again) [Editor’s Note: Aw, shucks!]



Gentlemen take right hand of your lady’s lower neighbor (diagonal down) and perform a right-hand turn.
(Everyone should be turning except the top right lady and the bottom left gentleman.)



Left hand turn with partner.



And begin again with new set. The configuration will have changed obviously.
http://www.oregonregencysociety.com/files/ecd/outs.gif

Here are some videos of the dance being performed by a variety of groups. When you watch them, note how people are ‘out’ at the ends. Here is the Duke of Kent’s Waltz being performed by Oregon Regency Society members last May:



A nice long movie of a civil war reenactment group performing the Duke of Kent’s Waltz:



Our mentors the Hampshire Regency Dancers perform a suite of dances that include Duple minors, Triple Minors, and Quadrilles. Can you find the Duke of Kent’s Waltz in there?



Now, gather at least six friends and give it a whirl yourself. Once you’ve got the hard bits down, you can learn more steps, and you will find that English Country Dancing is really not difficult at all!

[Thanks, Stephanie, for making it look easy! Come back next week, my dears, when we stand out for a moment on our dancing, and Marissa introduces some special posts by a new author of nineteenth century YA fiction.]

English Country Dance, Part I

[Today and Friday we're pleased to present Stephanie Johanesen, Founder and President of the Oregon Regency Society, who has graciously agreed to offer us all a tutorial on English Country Dancing. You can learn more about her and her group at www.orregency.org. Take it away, Stephanie!]

When I decided I was going to create a Regency Society, part of that process was to learn about the dancing aspect of the period. I knew I couldn’t have an event without it. The problem was, I was starting from the perspective of an Austen fan, and the only basis of reference I had about the dancing were the various examples of it on the adaptations. It was all I had to go by. I didn’t know it had a name; I didn’t know anything about it. Google was my greatest ally.

I Googled “The dances of Pride and Prejudice” and found a site listing the names of the dances. I then Googled the steps for a particular dance and learned it was an “English Country Dance” (ECD for short) … and came up with a site that not only provided reference for the steps but also the music. That was the Country Dance and Song Society. I stumbled over a group list there and discovered, to my surprise, a whole network of groups all over the country. Wow. What’s even better; I found groups in Oregon, one fairly close to me.

So when I began to organize our first ball, I had a caller. And I learned then that callers came with music and steps and the whole ball of wax, even sheet music. What a boon!

I look at the dancing from our first event in August of 2007, and I marvel at how smoothly we danced. Here is a medley of the dancing at our first event. It looks like we’ve done it before. At least 70% of the people present at that Regency party had never danced ECD before. [Editor's Note: don't you just feel like you were there in the nineteenth century?]



What makes ECD so ‘user friendly’ is that it can be called like a square dance. Square dancing is often cobbled together by the caller as the music goes along — which is not the case with ECD. English country dances on the most part are matched to a particular piece of music. So if you say; “Let’s dance the Duke of Kent Waltz,” you will know not only what the music sounds like, but also the moves that go with it. You do them enough, and you don’t need callers. You know the dances by heart, as they did back in the 18th and 19th centuries.

English country dances come in various forms. There are duple minors (a set of four dancers; two couples), triple minors (a set of six; three couples), circle dances, and the quadrille, which is a bit harder, but these are definitely the dances that are most accurate to the Regency period. Quadrilles are also set dances, but they are often not matched to particular pieces of music. Many English country dances performed by our group are older than the Regency period. It would be like dancing disco at a party today… but since the mannerisms are elegant and they are similar to the period dance, we are happy to include them in our events. And they are also easy to learn.

We do mostly duple minors. It’s good to choose this format because new dancers can be paired with more experienced ones, and it’s a bit simpler than a triple or a quadrille.

In ECD there is a top to the room (usually where the music is). The way it worked back then was that the highest ranked couples took the top to begin, and the lower you were toward the bottom of the room, the lower you were in the social pecking order. In some of Jane’s books, she mentions ‘starting’ the dance. That is a great honor. If the party is in your honor, you start at the top.

Duple minors are based on sets of four. Each ‘round’ of the music has a pre-determined set of movements that will occur within that set of four dancers. The ‘First Couple’ or ‘Ones’ are the couple closest to the top, and the ‘Second Couple’ or ‘Twos’ are the couple closest to the bottom. Gentlemen stand on the left side if you are looking toward the top of the room and ladies on the right. Sometimes during dances, these positions change, and when the ladies are on the left, that is known as being ‘improper.’

Each time a cycle of the music completes, a new couple will end up on the bottom and the top of the line. The ones progress down the room, the twos progress upwards. When a twos couple reaches the top, they wait the dance out one round, and go back in as ones. When a ones couple reaches the bottom, they wait out the next round, and then join back in as twos. It seems confusing — but when you’re doing it, it makes sense.

If there are an even number of couples in a line, then each round of music, the sets will either all be dancing, or one couple will be out at each end. If there are an odd number of couples, the one ‘out’ couple will appear at one end and then alternate to the other end on the next round. The trick is 1) to know when to join back in when you’re out, and 2) to remember what steps are required of you in your new role. A tip from me is to always angle yourself a bit downwards if you’re a one, and upwards if you are a two, that way, when the new couple appears in your set, you’ll always be facing them. Also, pay attention to what twos are doing if you’re a one, because chances are you’ll become a two soon enough.

Thanks, Stephanie, for that introduction. Come back on Friday, my friends, and Stephanie will walk us through the Duke of Kent’s Waltz. Formal attired recommended, but not required.