Tag Archives: Waltz

The Regency Minuet

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to take part in a display of dancing for a heritage open day. We were doing regency dances, but the display began with a couple minuet. One of the other dancers asked if it was a regency minuet and I had to admit that it was not, but the question got me thinking about what a regency minuet might have been like.

Were minuets still being danced in the regency period? George, Prince of Wales was sworn in as Prince Regent for his father George III on 6 February 1811, and he succeeded him as king on 29 January 1820. A quick survey of newspaper references to the minuet during the first and last years of the regency reveals that it was still being taught, and performed at balls, throughout that period. I didn’t have time to do a thorough search, but I quickly came across advertisements by dancing masters who continued to include the minuet among the dances they offered. The Morning Post for 23 January 1810 has one by Thomas Wilson, who lists minuets alongside cotillions, hornpipes and country dances. The Morning Herald for 6 April 1818 has another by Mr Cunningham, who was offering ‘Quadrilles, Waltzes, Spanish Dances, Minuets, &c. Taught in the most fashionable style’. The following year, in the Morning Post for 12 November 1819, Mr Levien in his turn offered quadrilles, waltzes, minuets and country dances, ‘or any other department of Fashionable Dancing’. The minuet seems to have been far from dead, at least so far as dancing masters were concerned.

The reports and advertisements for balls show that the minuet was still the opening dance, performed by a suitably high-ranking couple. The ball on Lord Mayor’s Day, reported in the Morning Chronicle for 11 November 1811, was ‘opened in a Minuet by the Duke del Infantado, the Spanish Ambassador, and Lady Georgiana Cecil’. However, one indication of the changes that were happening appears in the report of the Lord Mayor’s Easter Monday ball in the Morning Chronicle for 15 April 1819. The Earl of Morton and Miss Atkins danced the Menuet de la Cour, and the writer declared that ‘Nothing could be more elegant and graceful’. The report did not reveal whether the ball opened with this dance but it did explain that ‘It was originally intended that the minuet should conclude with the usual Gavot as danced at the Opera House, but that part of the performance was omitted, as being inconsistent with the dignity of his Lordship’s character as Lord High Commissioner to the Grand Assembly of the Church of Scotland’. The ‘Gavot’ was, of course, the Gavotte de Vestris. Other changes involving the minuet are also evident from the newspapers, although I will not pursue these here.

The Menuet de la Cour dated back to the late 1770s and seems to have been introduced to London in 1781, when Gaëtan Vestris and his wife Anne Heinel danced it in the ballet-pantomime Ninette à la Cour. This duet (with and without the Gavotte de Vestris) would become a staple of benefit performances in London’s theatres. The original choreography would undergo many transformations in the course of an exceptionally long afterlife. The version published in notation by Malpied around 1780 shows clearly that, although the Menuet de la Cour included some of the minuet’s long-established figures, its steps went well beyond those prescribed by Pierre Rameau and Kellom Tomlinson in the earlier 1700s. This may have made it a suitable basis for the development of this exacting exhibition dance in the decades around 1800. Here is the opening figure of the dance, following the reverences (also notated by Malpied), in which there is not a single conventional pas de menuet.

One question hovering in the background of the regency minuet is to do with dress. The minuet had begun its long career in the late 17^th century and had seen many changes of silhouette during the course of the 18^th century, particularly for women. This illustration, which dates to the mid-1700s, shows one of them.

How was this most formal and, apparently, inhibited of dances adjusted to the free-flowing female dress of the regency and for dancers who were at the same time experiencing the very different movement style of the early waltz? This print, published in 1813, shows Princess Charlotte (the Prince Regent’s daughter) dancing a minuet with William Cavendish, 6^th Duke of Devonshire. I can’t help thinking that the style and technique of the minuet, as well as its figures and its steps, were forced to change alongside the revolutions in dress and dancing.

There was one obvious attempt to bring the old duet up to date. The Sunday Monitor for 20 April 1817 has an advertisement by Thomas Wilson for a ‘Waltz and Quadrille Ball’ which ‘will be opened … by Mr. Wilson and a Young Lady, one of his Pupils, with the Waltz Minuet, composed by Mr. Wilson’. I know that the basic waltz step suggested by Wilson in his 1816 treatise A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing bears an interesting relationship to the minuet step. I am hoping that there is somebody out there who knows (or can find out) how the ‘Waltz Minuet’ was performed. I would be happy to attend a workshop!

Returning to Dance in History

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I realise, to my surprise and dismay, that it is eight weeks since my last post on Dance in History. September was a busy month, with two performances (and corresponding rehearsals) and then in October I seized the opportunity of a (modern) dance holiday. All this was good fun and gave me opportunities to sample dancing outside my usual areas – an early 19^th-century waltz, incorporating a short ‘petit ballet’, in September and some classical sequence dancing in October.

The waltz highlighted the links between the social dancing of the early 1800s and what we now define, too simply and narrowly, as ‘ballet’. Over the years, I’ve been much criticised in UK historical dance circles for my ballet background, but it has been invaluable to the baroque dance I have done and, now, for the social dancing of the following century. I can’t help thinking that more attention to the basics of what we call ballet would improve the technique and the enjoyment of historical dancers today as they learn the social dances of the past.

The sequence dancing showed how dance always holds its own history within it, whether as steps, figures or other dance conventions. Closer attention to this in modern forms of popular dancing (other than the ubiquitous ‘folk’ dancing, which is all too dominant in the UK historical dance world) may well reveal some surprising relationships and lineages as well as unsuspected survivals. My foray into classical sequence (I hope to do more) underlined how important it is to explore a range of modern social dancing alongside the historical repertoire.

I should have a bit more time over the coming months to write for Dance in History. I’m even hoping to persuade a guest contributor to write a post for me. There are plenty of dance topics to explore and I have a long list of ideas to work through.

The Waltz, 1802

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A little while ago, I encountered an early illustration of the waltz that was new to me. It may be well known to experts in the dancing of the 1800s, but I hadn’t seen it before. Nor could I find it in any of the general accounts of this dance I was able to access. It is an acquatint from Journal of a Party of Pleasure to Paris in the Month of August 1802, published in London the same year.

‘La Valse’ from Journal of a Party of Pleasure to Paris (1802).

It accompanies what is said to be the first known description of the waltz.

‘At night we went to Tivoli, … Every kind of diversion was going forward; … in the midst of the whole, dancing, on a very large floored space. But the dance was of so curious a nature that I must describe it. It is called a Valse; and it was there danced by about two hundred couple, to a tune extremely slow, each couple turning each other round and round, till they have completed the circle of the whole platform, in the manner of the sketch here presented. But this can only give a faint idea of it; the attitudes of the women are tasteful and sportive, to say no more of them; but of the men I can say nothing, they were so dirty and vulgar they only excited disgust. This dance, though very amusing to the lookers on, and doubtless to the performers, will, I think, never become the fashion in England.’

The Journal is anonymous, but the author has been identified as Sir John Dean Paul (1775-1852) an English neo-classical artist. The Tivoli gardens in Paris were named after those of the Villa d’Este near Rome and were fashionable as an amusement park from the 1790s to the 1840s. 1802 was the year of the Treaty of Amiens, which briefly halted the wars between France and Great Britain and allowed the English to visit Paris.

Waltz music dates back to the 1750s, but the dance seems to have emerged into polite society around 1800. I have elsewhere mentioned the similarity of the basic waltz step to the pas de menuet. Another possible influence on the waltz was the couple allemande, fashionable in the 1770s and 1780s. The hold of the fourth couple in the illustration resembles one of the figures depicted in Dubois’s Principes d’Allemande (undated, but perhaps published in the 1770s). The hold of the third couple appears in a later source, 16 Divisions of Waltzing by the English dancing master G.M.S. Chivers, published around 1822. The first of the four couples use a hold that might also relate to the couple allemande, although it does not exactly correspond to any of those depicted in the handful of treatises that explain this dance. The second couple look more like they are swinging one another around in a modern country dance manner. I haven’t come across anything that resembles it.

None of the couples look like they are dancing slowly. Was the music ‘extremely slow’ so that they could dance in double time? In this early version, the waltz looks as if it might indeed have been as shocking as onlookers claimed.

The minuet versus the waltz

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An early dance friend recently suggested to me that the 19^th-century waltz is more difficult than the 18^th-century minuet and invited me to discuss the idea. So, here goes.

I have danced many minuets over the years and I am well acquainted with the challenges of the ballroom minuet, as described by Pierre Rameau in Le Maître a danser (1725) and Kellom Tomlinson in The Art of Dancing (1735). I am nowhere near as practised in the early waltz. My friend did not specify any particular version, so I will look at Thomas Wilson’s A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816).

The minuet was the duet that opened 18^th-century formal balls. It was danced one couple at a time before the scrutiny of all the other guests. It was, in effect, an exhibition ballroom dance. This did not mean that it was slow and stately, 18^th-century minuets were lively and quite fast dances. It had specific steps and figures (floor patterns) that had to be performed in a set order. It also allowed for some improvisation, mainly through the use of ‘grace steps’ in place of the conventional vocabulary. Controlled and elegant deportment was essential, not least to enable the partners to manage and display their elaborate attire, including the gentleman’s hat.

What was difficult about the minuet? Apart from the pressure of performance, both the steps and the figures were exacting. Minuet music is in 3 / 4 but the basic pas de menuet takes two bars of music, so four steps have to be fitted into six musical beats. There are two main timings, and both could be used within a ballroom minuet. The contretemps du menuet, the other basic step, had another different timing over six beats. All the steps of the minuet require a great deal of practice if they are to be performed with ease and elegance. There are five figures: the opening figure; the Z-figure; taking right hands; taking left hands; taking both hands, which is the closing figure of the dance. The Z-figure is the principal figure of the minuet. It can repeated at will and is often, but not always, reprised just before the final figure. Some idea of the steps and figures of the minuet is given by Kellom Tomlinson’s notation of the dance.

Kellom Tomlinson. The Art of Dancing (1735), Plate U

At balls, the minuet was addressed to the two highest ranking members of the audience, referred to as ‘the presence’. The dancers had to begin and end facing them and the figures had to be oriented in relation to them. The accurate performance of the figures, as well as their placing and orientation within the dancing space, needs a great deal of practice.

Musically the minuet was challenging. The couple could begin their dance at any point in the music (taking care to start on an odd-numbered bar), so their dance figures would inevitably cross the musical structure and phrasing at several points. Tomlinson tries to suggest such musical challenges in his notation of the minuet. This, too, needs much practice to master.

What about the waltz? How difficult was it? The waltz was always danced with a number of couples on the floor at any one time. It was a social dance and not meant as a display piece. Wilson distinguished between the French waltz and the German waltz. The French waltz began with the ‘Slow Waltz’, changed to the ‘Sauteuse Waltz’ and ended with the ‘Jetté, or Quick Sauteuse Waltz’. As the titles suggest, the dance got progressively faster. Each of these little waltzes had its own steps. In the slow waltz, these were a half-turn pirouette and a pas de bourée, over two bars of 3 / 4 music. The rhythmic pattern is reminiscent of the simplest timing of the basic pas de menuet. I can’t help feeling there was a link between them. The sauteuse waltz replaces the pirouette with a jetté-step combination and makes the first step of the pas de bourée a jetté. The jetté or quick sauteuse waltz had just one step, a jetté-hop combination, performed first on one foot and then on the other. Wilson’s explanations are not entirely clear and I am radically condensing them. It is obvious, though, that these steps need practice if they are to be well performed.

The German waltz was Wilson’s undoubted favourite.

‘The Construction of the Movements is truly elegant; and, when they are well performed, afford subject of much pleasing Amusement and Delight.’

This version of the waltz had two quite different, and slightly more complicated, steps than those in the French waltz. In all Wilson’s versions of the waltz, the dancers needed good deportment but – just as their dress was freer than in the 18^thcentury – a degree of informality was acceptable.

There are no figures in the waltz, which simply follows a circular track around the dancing space with the partners turning as they go. The dance is not directed at those who may be watching. It simply tries to make best use of the available dancing space.

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), plate

One of the most complicated aspects of the early 19^th-century waltz is the varieties of what would today be called ‘hold’. Wilson’s pretty frontispiece shows several of these.

Thomas Wilson. A Description of the Correct Method of Waltzing (1816), frontispiece

The partners had to change hold as they dance. I suggest that this would have taken quite a bit of practice, certainly rather more than the basic steps. This is one area where the waltz is definitely more difficult than the minuet, in which the partners merely take hands from time to time.

Musically the waltz does not pose challenges. The dancers could start anywhere (although, like the minuet, on an odd bar) and they didn’t need to worry about musical structure or phrasing since the waltz is repetitious. However, they did need to worry about being in time with each other and fitting their steps and turns around each other. Again, this would have taken practice, just as it does with the modern waltz. There was also the speed of the dance, at least with the sauteuse and jetté or quick sauteuse waltzes, which made neat footwork a challenge. Giddiness with all the turning was perhaps seen as a pleasure rather than a difficulty.

So, which dance do I think was the most difficult? It has to be the minuet, for its status as an exhibition dance, the complexity of its steps and figures and the challenges of its musicality. The waltz has its fair share of challenges, but a simple early 19^th-century waltz can be learned and enjoyed quite quickly. There is no such thing as a simple ballroom minuet.