WALTZING THROUGH EUROPE B ALTZING HROUGH UROPE Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the AKKA W T E Long Nineteenth-Century Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth-Century EDITED BY EGIL BAKKA, THERESA JILL BUCKLAND, al. et HELENA SAARIKOSKI AND ANNE VON BIBRA WHARTON From ‘folk devils’ to ballroom dancers, this volume explores the changing recep� on of fashionable couple dances in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards. A refreshing interven� on in dance studies, this book brings together elements of historiography, cultural memory, folklore, and dance across compara� vely narrow but W markedly heterogeneous locali� es. Rooted in inves� ga� ons of o� en newly discovered primary sources, the essays aff ord many opportuni� es to compare sociocultural and ALTZING poli� cal reac� ons to the arrival and prac� ce of popular rota� ng couple dances, such as the Waltz and the Polka. Leading contributors provide a transna� onal and aff ec� ve lens onto strikingly diverse topics, ranging from the evolu� on of roman� c couple dances in Croa� a, and Strauss’s visits to Hamburg and Altona in the 1830s, to dance as a tool of T cultural preserva� on and expression in twen� eth-century Finland. HROUGH Waltzing Through Europe creates openings for fresh collabora� ons in dance historiography and cultural history across fi elds and genres. It is essen� al reading for researchers of dance in central and northern Europe, while also appealing to the general reader who wants to learn more about the vibrant histories of these familiar dance forms. E As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the UROPE publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: A drunken scene in a dancing hall with a sly customer eyeing a young girl. Coloured etching by G. Cruikshank, 1848, aft er himself. Wellcome Collecti on, CC BY. Cover design: Anna Gatti book eebook and OA edi� ons also available EGIL BAKKA, THERESA JILL BUCKLAND, OBP HELENA SAARIKOSKI AND ANNE VON BIBRA WHARTON (EDS) https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski and Anne von Bibra Wharton. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Egil Bakka, Theresa Jill Buckland, Helena Saarikoski and Anne von Bibra Wharton (eds.), Waltzing Through Europe: Attitudes towards Couple Dances in the Long Nineteenth-Century. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0174 Copyright and permission for reuse of many images included in this publication differ from the above. Copyright and permissions information for images is provided separately in the List of Illustrations. In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0174#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0174#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-732-0 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-733-7 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-734-4 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-735-1 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-736-8 ISBN XML: 978-1-78374-737-5 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0174 Cover image: A Drunken Scene in a Dancing Hall with a Sly Customer Eyeing a Young Girl (1848). Coloured etching by G. Cruikshank, after himself. Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0. Cover design: Anna Gatti. 2. The State of Research Egil Bakka A comprehensive body of literature deals fully or partly with round dances, and particularly with the Waltz. There are works that deal with the form and structure of the dances based on first-hand knowledge, such as manuals from dancing masters. Many surveys describe the history of round dances, often as part of broader projects. These are often built upon the compilation and study of scattered excerpts from a large variety of historical documents, such as diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers etc. A large number of these excerpts recur in various books to justify different arguments, and sometimes with conflicting interpretations. There are also studies of the music that accompanied the round dance, which discuss the dance form and the historical context. The moral and medical criticism of, and resistance to, the round dances, and particularly the Waltz, is a recurrent theme that is also central to this book. Writers in the field range from the dancing masters of the nineteenth century, dance historians belonging to quite different professions, and more typical academic researchers from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the survey that follows, I shall concentrate more on the knowledge made available than on the research methodologies, both because this was the main focus of the researchers themselves, and because it is the dominant interest of the present book. Works on Dance Form and Structure The manuals of the dancing masters contain discussions about and, eventually, descriptions of, round dances from the very beginning of © Egil Bakka, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0174.02 28 Waltzing Through Europe the nineteenth century,1 well into the twentieth century.2 These are not research publications, but since experts who could dance (as well as teach the dances) wrote many of them, they are trustworthy sources for the forms of dance enjoyed by the educated classes from the nineteenth century onwards.3 The writers’ skills in analysis and description vary, however. Additionally, many writers copied their descriptions from each other, particularly if they did not have first-hand knowledge and/or were putting together encyclopaedias or surveys, rather than descriptions for their dance pupils.4 Such weak points are not always easy to identify. At the beginning of the twentieth century, around a century after the dancing masters’ first descriptions of round dances, pioneers in different European countries started to collect what they called folk dances. These were similar to the dances in the collections of the dancing masters, again written by experts who knew and could teach them. The aim was to prevent the characteristic dances of each nation from being lost, and to enable groups and organisations to use them. In western Europe, round dance types constituted a major part of the rural dance repertoire, but the collectors found that these dances were mostly too common, too new and too simple to be included in the 1 Johann Heinrich Kattfuss, Taschenbuch für Freunde und Freundinnen des Tanzes von Johann Heinrich Kattfuss (Leipzig: Heinrich Gräff, 1800), http://books.google. com/books?id=-GYNAQAAIAAJ; Ernst Chr. Mädel, Anfangsgründe der Tanzkunst (Erfurt: Verlag des Werfassers, 1801), p. 175; Dietrich Alexander Valentin Ivensenn, Terpsichore: ein Taschenbuch für Freunde und Freundinnen des Tanzes in Liv-Cur-und Ehstland (Riga: [n.p.], 1806). 2 Lucile Svae, Kortfattet selvinstruktør i moderne dans: første bok på norsk om den moderne selskapsdans undervist ved landets danseskoler, ed. by Hjalmar Svae (Oslo: [n.p.], 1947). 3 Eduard Friedrich David Helmke and Kurt Petermann, Neue Tanz-und Bildungsschule (Zentralantiquariat d. Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1982); Franz Anton Roller, Systematisches Lehrbuch der bildenden Tanzkunst und körperlichen Ausbildung von der Geburt an bis zum vollendeten Wachthume des Menschen: ausgearbeitet für das gebildete Publikum, zur Belehrung bei der körperlichen Erziehung und als Unterricht für diejenigen, welche sich zu ausübenden Künstlern und zu nützlichen Lehrern dieser Kunst bilden wollen und herausgegeben bei Gelegenheit des dreihundertjährigen Jubiläums der Königl. Preuss. Landesschule Pforta (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat d. DDR, 1989); Bernhard Klemm, Katechismus der Tanzkunst: Ein Leidfaden für Lehrer und Lernende (Leipzig: Weber, 1855). 4 Gustav Desrat and Charles Nuitter, Dictionnaire de la danse, historique, théorique, pratique et bibliographique, depuis l’origine de la danse jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Librairies-imprimeries réunies, 1895); Franz Magnus Böhme, Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland: Darstellender Theil, 2 vols, I (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1886). 2. The State of Research 29 manuals. As a result, if any material about round dances is included in these manuals it is, at best, very uneven and selective.5 The development of folk dance manuals throughout the twentieth century is too large a subject to discuss here. The simplest and most widespread versions of round dances were not particularly attractive to these manuals, but forms with round dance elements as part of more complex structures were well represented; Tvrtko Zebec discusses this point further in