Colonial Dances of America

Topics for Today’s Class

•Native American Dance •Early American Social Dance and Its Sources –Opposition to Dance in Early America

One of the earliest dance paintings, by John White, circa 1585. Indians of the Roanoke region.

Account from Cabeza de Vaca (16th century Spanish conquistador) of the Cuchendados, near the Rio Grande

• The Indians, men and women, leaped and caprioled, unretarded by their earthly ballast. With their faces painted with red ochre and minium [two reddening agents] , they circled about the fire, to the rhythmic scraping of grooved sticks. They kept their feet together, their elbows out, their shoulders hunched, and thus, they hopped round and round. Belly to rump, for the space of six hours, without ever ceasing their circular progress or their lamentable cries.

• Ensemble (rather than solo) dances • Rhythm produced not only by drums, but also: – Rattles – Bells attached to clothing • Movements are highly symbolic • Dance space – a circle

• Not acrobatic: dancers stay close to the ground • Small steps • Dances are often endurance tests • Largest movements in torso and head • Musical accompaniment is largely vocal and monophonic • Hunting • Fishing • Planting • Harvesting • Preparing Food • Warfare Contemporary Native American Dance: A malleable tradition

• War Mothers and Women’s dances • Tiny Tots Wardance

The simplest way to keep the fires strong is to keep within the sound of the drums. –Ron Harris

Colonial Dances of America - Their European Roots • Menuet (Minuet) and Quadrille from France • Country Dances from England • Hornpipes, Jigs and Reels from Scotland & Ireland Opposition to Dance

"A Dance is the Devil’s Procession. He that enters into a Dance, enters into his Possession. The Devil is the Guide, the middle and the end of the Dance.”— Increase Mather, An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn Out of the Quiver of the Scriptures (1684).

Maypole Dancing

Puritans did not condemn all forms of dance, but Maypole dancing was seen as sinful, “a stynching idol” around which pagans worshipped. Not Against All Forms of Dance

• “Dancing or Leaping is a natural expression of joy: so that there is no more Sin in it, than in laugther, or any outward expression of inward Rejoycing.” (Increase Mather) • His quarrel was with “Gynecansrical or Mixt Dancing” • Why? Incentive to break the 7th Commandment.

COLONIAL DANCES The dance floor was the place where a person’s command of the attributes of gentility: costume, manners, movement, grace and ease, were put to the ultimate and most public test. • French officers who had seen George Washington dance at a ball remarked that his dancing could not have been improved by a Parisian education.” (Keller 14)

• A History of Social Dance in America • Library of Congress Dance Memory Website French Court Dances

The Minuet

The Quadrille Louis XIV – the Sun King • Irish Jigs and Reels (combined rhythmic taps and shuffles to create a lively and dynamic dance which showed up on opera stages and in more commonplace spots, such as taverns.) English Country Dancing (1650-1850) (p. 61 I See America Dancing)

• More democratic – Couples took turns leading figures – Symmetrical tracks • Less complex – Fewer figures – Fewer steps

Only in a culture where the absolute power of the king had been tempered by the demands of a democracy could such a dance flourish. (Needham) It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made – when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt – it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.” (Emma, Jane Austen) Bath Assembly House built expressly for the kinds of dancing done in Austen’s day English Country Dance Figures Dance: Upon a Summer's Day Nashville Country Dancers Playford Ball Scene from « Pride and Prejudice » John Playford

• 1623-86 • Music publisher • Book seller • Choral director at St Paul’s Cathedral • Published multiple editions of the English Dancing Master, beginning in 1651 Escaping the Difficulties of 17th Century Life in England through Dance

• King Charles Under arrest & soon to be beheaded • Dissenters held power • Upper class losing power • Political unrest • Outbreaks of Plague • Great Fires Dance Titles

• Newcastle Between 1700-1830, 25,000 • Upon A Summer’s Day dances were published in books • The Spaniard in England. Doesn’t include • Dover Pier those published in Ireland, • The Dressed Ship Scotland, Holland and Spain. • A la Mode de France Between 1730-1810, 2,800 • Drive the Cold Winter home-grown dances published Away in America • Juice of Barley • Jamaica

Works Cited and Consulted • Ellis, Clyde. "We Don't Want Your Rations, We Want This Dance": The Changing Use of Song and Dance on the Southern Plains The Western Historical Quarterly Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 133-154 • Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, 1857 • Marks III, Joseph E. America Learns to Dance. A Historical Study of Dance Education in America before 1900. New York: Dance Horizons, 1957. • Needham, Maureen. I See American Dancing Published by University of Illinois Press, 2002 • Van Winkle Keller, Kate. Dance and its Music in America, 1528-1789 Pendragon Press, 2007. • ------. George Washington. A Biography in Social Dance. Hendrickson Group, 1998. • “Waltz” Grove On Line Music Dictionary. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/book/omo_gmo