Plain Quadrille - 1890
Caller Ralph Sweet provides the instruction and prompts the figures in this Retrospective Session from the 2000 Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend, held at the University of New Hampshire. The tunes are played by Rodney Miller, fiddle, and Bob McQuillen, piano. The tunes are:
First Change: Patience Quadrille
Second Change: Come Haste to the Wedding
Third Change: Caledonian #1
Fourth Change: an arrangement of British Grenadiers and other popular tunes of the day
From the syllabus of the Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend, edited by David Smukler:
"Ralph’s source for the Plain Quadrille was PROMPTING – How To Do It by John M. Schell, One of Boston's Leading Prompters, $1.00, Pub. 1890, Carl Fischer, Boston, NY, & Chicago. A “change” was a brief sequence of figures, and the quadrille consisted of five of these “changes” (later four were danced, then three). These sequences were danced rapidly, one after the other, and ending with a promenade off the floor. Dancers would not be taught or walked through the figures at a public dance, but were expected to learn them beforehand at dancing school or from another dancer. In dancing schools two-hand turns were used, but Ralph believes that in “real-world” dances these became swings, and other liberties were probably taken as well. Calls at these dances were minimal, and might have been delivered through a megaphone. Ralph taught us what we’d need to know first, and then we ran through the following four changes in rapid succession, to simulate the feel of the old dances."
Tags: Plain Quadrille, quadrille, Ralph Sweet
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Caller Ralph Sweet provides the instruction and prompts the figures in this Retrospective Session from the 2000 Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend, held at the University of New Hampshire. The tunes are played by Rodney Miller, fiddle, and Bob McQuillen, piano. The tunes are:
First Change: Patience Quadrille
Second Change: Come Haste to the Wedding
Third Change: Caledonian #1
Fourth Change: an arrangement of British Grenadiers and other popular tunes of the day
From the syllabus of the Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend, edited by David Smukler:
"Ralph’s source for the Plain Quadrille was PROMPTING – How To Do It by John M. Schell, One of Boston's Leading Prompters, $1.00, Pub. 1890, Carl Fischer, Boston, NY, & Chicago. A “change” was a brief sequence of figures, and the quadrille consisted of five of these “changes” (later four were danced, then three). These sequences were danced rapidly, one after the other, and ending with a promenade off the floor. Dancers would not be taught or walked through the figures at a public dance, but were expected to learn them beforehand at dancing school or from another dancer. In dancing schools two-hand turns were used, but Ralph believes that in “real-world” dances these became swings, and other liberties were probably taken as well. Calls at these dances were minimal, and might have been delivered through a megaphone. Ralph taught us what we’d need to know first, and then we ran through the following four changes in rapid succession, to simulate the feel of the old dances."