A liry Social History

by Carol McD. Wallace, Don McDonagh, jean L . Druesedow,

Laurence Libin, and Constance Old

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Rizzoli, New York

Dance: A li'ry Social History

A liry Social History

by Carol McD. Wallace, Don McDonagh, Jean L. Druesedow,
Laurence Libin, and Constance Old

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Rizzoli, New York

This book was published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Costume
Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from December 17,
1986 through September 6, 1987. This exhibition has been made possible by
Shiseido Cosmetics.
Copyright 1986 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Rizzoli International Public:nions, Inc., 597 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017
John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief
Barbara Burn, Project Supervisor
Andrew Solomon, Picture Researcher
Roberta Savage, Designer
Type set by Concept Typographic Services, New York
Color separations by Reprocolor Llovet, Barcelona, Spain
Printed and bound by Cronion S.A., Barcelona, Spain
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dance: a very social history
Catalog of an exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
1. Dancing-Social aspects-History-Exhibitions.
2. Costume-History-Exhibitions. 3. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New
York, N.Y.)-Catalogs. I. Wallace, Carol, 1955-. II. Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York, N.Y.)
GV1588.6. D36 1986 306' .484'074014 71 86-28580
ISBN 0-87099-486-7
ISBN 0-8478-0819-X (Rizzoli)

Frontispiece: Photograph of Irene Castle by Cecil Beaton

Contents

Foreword by Philippe de Montebello

Preface by Diana Vreeland

Introduction by Yoshio Ohno

11

Chapter 1 Dreams of Flight by Carol McD. Wallace

52

Dancing Lessons

54

Stages of the Ball

58

Chapter 2 The Evolution of Social Dancing by Don McDonagh

80

Chapter 3 The Fabric of Dance: Whalebone and Swirling Silk by Jean L. Druesedow

107

Chapter4 The Iconography of Dance by Laurence Libin and Constance Old

126

Picture Credits

Foreword

The Ball nights in Bath are moments snatched from

Paradise, rendered bewitching by music, beauty, elegance, fashion, etiquette. ...
Thus did Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers
describe the magic of a grand ball. Even the
names of such dances as the minuet, the quadrille, and the waltz are enough to evoke the
image of a resplendently dressed assemblage
performing with grace and style. The anticipation that precedes such a great social occasion
and the afterglow of recollection are intensified
not just by the dance and the music but also by
the costumes that are so integral a part of the
experience. Dance offers a feast for the eye as
well as the ear, for it is in response to the grand
ball that costume artists have produced some
of their most inspired designs. The collections
of the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan
Museum of Art are especially rich in clothing
made expressly for dancing, from the formal
gowns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the mini-dresses of the twentieth.
One of the hallmarks of social dancing is the
inexhaustible enthusiasm of its practitioners,
who invent opportunities to dance whenever
possible-birthday balls, holiday balls, hunt
balls, and shipboard balls are but a few examples. Sometimes, as in the Assembly Rooms at
Bath during the early nineteenth century, several nights a week were given over to dancing.
Everyone who could used to give balls, including Queen Victoria, who in 1842 hosted a masquerade ball for which she dressed as Queen
Philippa while her consort, Prince Albert, disguised himself as King Edward III.
As dances have exerted a profound influence
on the development of costume, so they have
affected the manners and mores of the societies
in which they originated, changes that have
6

been subtly but clearly recorded in contemporary paintings and decorative arts. The formal
elegance of the eighteenth century, for instance,
is nowhere more beautifully reflected than in the
work of Antoine Watteau, who captured with
paint the delicately patterned and watered silks
of the costumes of his dancers as well as the
stately geometry of their skirts and bodices. The
costumes themselves also reveal a great deal
about the periods in which they were worn. Ball
gowns of the nineteenth century, with their wide
crinolines, for example, seem to be made for
waltzing romantically-but with one's partner
never closer than arm's length. The dances and
costumes of the twentieth century combine the
exotic with the daring. Before World War I Irene
and Vernon Castle inspired a generation by performing the latest dances, including the Latin
American tango, at afternoon this dansants,
where skirts rose tantalizingly as the music
became livelier. After the war, even shorter
skirts were necessitated (or inspired) by the
Charleston, the turkey trot, and other scandalous steps adored by all levels of society. No
matter how chic these became, however, the
full-length ball gown never went out of style.
The great gowns created by Christian Dior and
Charles James in the 1950s epitomized the ball
as the high point of the social season. Making an
entrance in one of these embroidered or beaded
creations immediately established the wearer's
position in society.
As it has in past years, the Museum happily
pays homage to the guiding spirit of Diana
Vreeland, Special Consultant to the Costume
Institute. Her keen eye and lifelong commitment to fashion are again reflected in a judicious
and singular selection for this, her fifteenth,
annual exhibition of costume. The Museum
owes a great debt to her and her entire staff.

Preface

This accompanying publication has profited

greatly from the combined expertise of its four
authors. Jean Druesedow, Associate Curator in
Charge of the Costume Institute, has provided a
delightful survey of the costumes, while the
iconography of dance as it has been interpreted
in the visual arts is analyzed by Laurence Libin,
Curator of the Museum's Department of Musical Instruments, assisted by Constance Old.
Don McDonagh has sketched for us the evolution of social dances, while Carol Wallace has
contributed an anecdotal history of those who
performed them. Other individuals whose work
has been crucial in producing the book and
mounting the exhibition include Katell le
Bourhis, Research Associate and coordinator for
the exhibition, and Martha Deese, Exhibition
Assistant. Together with the authors, Andrew
Solomon researched and collected the illustrations for this volume, and Roberta Savage, the
designer, has put them together in a manner that
reflects the spirit of the subject. I wish to thank
Barbara Bum, Executive Editor of the Editorial
Department, for her excellent work in developing the book and seeing it through to publication. Special thanks are due also to Reba Adler,
Charles Flynn, Coco Flynn, Robert Kauffman,
David Kiehl, Joan M. Macri, and Monica
Mosley.
Finally, I gratefully acknowledge Valerian
Rybar and Jean-Fran<;ois Daigre, who have selflessly contributed their talents to the design
concept for the exhibition, and I express my
deepest appreciation to Shiseido Cosmetics for
the essential support they have so obligingly
provided.

Dance is a celebration.
Dance is the vitality and expression that exist
in all of us. Throughout history, beautiful and
enticing clothes have been made for dancing,
because dressing for balls and parties has been
the delight of women and men since the beginning of time. The luxurious drama generated
by the cut and the exquisite fabric of a dress
enhances and echoes the dance movement.
Great dresses have a spirit of their own, projecting allure into the wearer and into the evening. A
dazzling fantasy is created by lace and chiffon,
brocade and lame, ribbons and paillettes.
Dance and the clothing the world chooses to
dance in are a response to the music, to the joy.
They are a reflection of how the world was at a
particular point in history, or is today. Dance recreates the aura of a time gone by, in the carefully mannered dignity of the minuet, the joy
and languor of the waltz, the raucousness of the
polka, the high energy of the turkey trot, the
seductive insolence of the tango, or the boldness
of the twist. Moliere said that the destiny of
nations depends on the art of dancing, and his
words ring true today as one senses the manner
and ways of each generation in the dances it
produced.
Diana Vreeland

Special Consultant
The Costume Institute

Philippe de Montebello

Director
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photograph of evening slipper by Roger Vivier for Dior by Richard Avedon

Introduction

In Japan we have always been impressed with

the talent and taste of Diana Vreeland and her
ability to produce magnificent costume exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since
her first exhibition, "The World of Balenciaga,"
in 1972, she has consistently maintained a high
level, and we are especially pleased to sponsor
"Dance;' her fifteenth exhibition.
It is generally believed that the first performance of Western dance in Japan took place in
1883 at a government guest house called the
Rokumeikan. The government of that time,
after more than two centuries of Japanese isolation, was bent upon absorbing Western culture
for the purpose of making Japan a member of
the Western community of nations. The
Rokumeikan itself became a symbol of Westerntsm.
While the Rokumeikan was a place of varied
social activities, one of its chief functions was to
hold formal balls almost every evening for the
entertainment of diplomats, senior officials, and
guests of the government. Women of the imperial court and upper echelons of society traded
their Japanese dress for Western costumebustle-style gowns that came from Paris. Naturally, all who attended learned dances such as the
quadrille, waltz, polka, mazurka, and lancers.
The many events held at the Rokumeikan
offered welcome opportunities for the Japanese
to assimilate different facets of Western culture,
including architecture, music, fashion, cuisine
-even etiquette. Japan, long a keen observer of
foreign cultures, absorbed and adapted the
many customs and mores it was exposed to,
resulting in the unique Japanese culture as it is
widely known in the world today.
In 1872, eleven years before the opening of
the Rokumeikan, Shiseido was established as
the forerunner of private Western-style phar-

macies in Japan. Evolving as a creator of

cosmetics, Shiseido owed its
understanding of modern pharmacology to
Shinzo Fukuhara, son ofShiseido's founder, who
studied pharmacology as well as fine art in New
York and Paris for five years. Upon returning
home, he introduced Western aesthetic values to
Japan through his cosmetics company and paved
the way for Japanese women to dream of Western beauty and glamour. Today Shiseido cosmetics are appreciated in America and around
the world as being truly Japanese in spirit.
We at Shiseido are proud to continue this
tradition by participating in "Dance," and we
hope that people from around the world will
enjoy the exhibition and the book that accompanies it.
We~tern-style

YoshioOhno

President and Chief Executive Officer

Shiseido Co., Ltd.

Dreams ofFlight

by Carol McD. Wallace

Twirling figures, gloved hands clasped, the
strains of the violin; wilted nosegays, the family
jewels, eagerness and flirtation and vanity;
matches made, matches broken, gossip repeated
and reputations ruined; dancing, dancing badly,
dancing too close, dancing like an angel. The
upper classes have always danced. They have
danced at court fetes, at public assemblies, at
debutante parties, at tea dances, in hotels and
nightclubs and at charity balls. They have
danced as recreation, for dancing is exhilarating
and enjoyable. But behind the stately figures of
the minuet or the pulsing of the tango there
are-and have always been-other purposes.
For a ballroom is a controlled environment; the
guests at a ball, having been screened by invitation, presumably all meet the same social standards. Because of this screening, and because
men and women meet in a ballroom on an equal
footing, opportunities for matchmaking abound.
Of course, because a ball is exclusive, there
are also people trying to get in who do not
belong. Some succeed, though the equipment
for success and the success rate itself vary wildly
from country to country, era to era. Overall, the
social structure that kept eighteenth-century
Versailles and London relatively pure has, needless to say, changed. The waltz, ragtime, and the
twist have all been blamed for ushering chaos
into the stately environment of the ballroom. So,
too, with more reason, have the rise of the middle class, wars, and Freud. Despite the march of
modernity, however, people still give balls. The
ballrooms in Newport's mansions blaze with
light all summer long for this dance or that;
marquees mushroom in English gardens during
the season; Versailles, from time to time, still
vibrates to music. People still want to be invited
but are not; romances and marriages are still
made and broken. The dance goes on.

"The nobility andfinanciers thus lived in intimacy and in camaraderie in the garrison and in Parisian society; the balls at ~r
sailles restored the line ofdemarcation [between aristocrats and
the middle class] in the bluntestfashion. Monsieur de Lusson, a
young man with a channingface, immensely rich, a good officer,
who lived habitually in the best company, had the imprudence to
go to one ofthese balls; he was chased away with such severity
that, despairing on account ofthe ridicule he was covered with in
an era when ridicule was the worst ofevils, he killed himself on
arriving in Paris. This seemedperfectly ordinary to the people of
the court, but odious to the haute bourgeoisie."
-Comtesse de Boigne, Memoires

1-1. Opposite: In 1745 Louis XV and

seven courtiers, impenetrably
disguised as clipped yew trees,
entered the Galerie des Glaces at
Versailles for a costume ball. The
king used his elaborately achieved
anonymity to flirt and dance with
one Mme d'Etioles, soon to

become famous as his mistress,

Mme de Pompadour.
1-2. Above: The clipped yew tree,
reinterpreted by couturier Paul
Poiret, 1912.

11

1-3. The courtyard at Paris's Hotel

de Ville, converted into an elaborate ballroom for one night's festivities. Boxes for spectators,
massive garlands of flowers, and
thousands of candles completely
transformed the seat of municipal
bureaucracy.

12

The Ancien Regime

For grandeur, in the eighteenth century, nothing
could surpass Versailles. The name conjures up
images oflong, high-ceilinged rooms with glossy
parquet floors and gilded paneling. One imagines formal figures, with extravagant panniers
and powdered hair, gliding across the floor with a
rustle of silk in the characteristic courtier's walk,
the pas de Reine (the women looked as if they
moved on wheels). Candlelight and jewelspangled fabric, enameled snuffboxes and redheeled shoes, art and artifice made that world.
There, cooped up in a magnificent palace run
according to a very strict etiquette, the great
nobles of France idled away year after year.
But who would have been elsewhere? Versailles was the seat of fashion and influence, and
to be sent away was disgrace. The courtiers of
Versailles had the daily satisfaction of knowing
that they were in the most excruciatingly exclusive spot in the world-and they spent much of
their time and attention on further refining the
levels of exclusivity within that world.
It was not enough that, for one to be presented at court, one's family need have been
noble since 1400 or performed significant service

to the king as a minister, ambassador, or marshal

of France. Satisfying though it was to think that
the bourgeoisie was shut out from the exquisite
life of ce pays-ci (as Versailles was known), daily
effort went into securing, guarding, or encroaching upon high position. Everyone cared deeply
about rank and favor-aside from fashion, these
were the principal concerns at Versailles. And
every moment of the day provided opportunities
to assert one's rank. In chapel, the dukes and
princes could provide themselves with cushions
to kneel on but only Princes of the Blood could
place those cushions at a straight angle on the
floor. Who sat in whose presence, who was
placed where at table, who danced in which
order at a ball-these were matters of enormous
moment.
Of course, the balls were numerous. Royal
weddings, royal births, victories, all called for
protracted series of celebratory balls. Many of
these were rigorously exclusive: Horace Walpole, for example, in 1775 attended a ball at
Versailles where he considered himself lucky to
have been assigned a seat on the bane des ambassadeurs; he did not expect to dance, for only
royalty and a few chosen nobles did that. It -was
almost like a performance of a ballet, and Wal-

pole criticized it as such. Walpole, writing to the

countess of Upper Ossory, did not think "the
clothes, though of gauze and the lightest silks,
had much taste;' and he said, "I was not so
struck with the dancing as I expected." But he
thought Marie Antoinette was heavenly, for her
beauty and her grace. "The monarch did not
dance, but for the two first rounds of the minuets even the Queen does not turn her back to
him"; no mean feat when following the highly
complex steps of a minuet.
It was a beautiful, hermetic world, but the
seal between the French court and the outside
world was not complete. There were ambassadors and marshals and ministers sprung from
the middle class: the due de Richelieu, for
instance, never lived down his descent from
the rather plebeian-albeit brilliant-finance
minister Fouquet. Royal mistresses, too, could
experience a dizzying elevation in rank and influence with their tenancy of the king's bed.
Louis XIV had actually married the strict, religious, and not aristocratically bred Mme de
Maintenon.
Then there was the case of Jeanne Poisson,
whose story is told with great charm in a biography by Nancy Mitford. Jeanne Poisson was
a bourgeoise. She was also, as it happened,
charming, beautiful, and talented. She danced,
sang, painted, rode, engraved precious stones,
and dressed brilliantly, which took a great deal
of effort in the 1740s. She was, with all these

extraordinary gifts, a woman of warmth and honesty, straightforward, kind, and generous. She
married aM. d'Etioles and became very popular
in bourgeois circles in Paris. As a bourgeoise,
she could never be presented to France's monarch, so there were distinct limits to her social
horizons. She did have a country house near
Versailles, however, and it was traditional that
neighbors were allowed to follow the king's hunt
in carriages. Jeanne could not possibly resist that
opportunity; she followed the hunt, one day in a
pink dress riding in a blue phaeton, the next day
wearing a blue dress in a pink phaeton. The

1-4. The ladies seem hard put to

keep their balance during a Scotch
reel under their huge coiffures,
which were erected over a cushion
or a framework of wire, pomaded
into place, and then powdered
white. These elaborate hairdos
were usually undone once a month,
and in the interim they often
attracted vermin.

1-S.f4t: The duchess of Devonshire, seen here (center) at the

Windsor Ball, was the ravishing
young wife of one of England's
greatest noblemen. Charming,
vivacious, and spendthrift, she set
the fashions for late-eighteenthcentury England, much as Marie
Antoinette did in France.

13

king, handsome, passionate Louis XV, noticed.

His mistress, the duchesse de Chateauroux,
noticed him noticing, and warned off little Mme
d'Etioles.
Then Mme de Chateauroux died. That
the king would take a new mistress nobody
doubted, and every pretty, ambitious woman in
Paris or Versailles imagined herself in the role.
Though it was rumored that the king was tired of
the plotting and scheming of his aristocratic mistresses, it seemed impossible that any woman of
the middle class could fill such an exalted place.
Nevertheless, there were many bourgeoises
eager to try. There was one way they could meet
the king-at public balls. In the town of Ver-

sailles and in Paris, certain balls were open to

anyone sufficiently well dressed. The king loved
to dance, so he frequently attended these fetes,
but in spite of his mask, his voice and characteristic walk would give him away, and
he would be mobbed by lovely if importunate
women.
In February of 1745, the dauphin was married, and there were festivities almost every
night. Garlands of roses, enormous buffet tables
covered in pink velvet, marble walls put up for a
night, palm trees, chandeliers, and thousands of
candles decked ballrooms in Paris and Versailles.
The climax was a masked ball at the palace of
Versailles. Every window blazed with light, and
1-6, 7. A less ambitious alternative
to a costume was the domino, the
loose garment worn opposite, and by
the lady at the center of the dance
floor (/eft). The combination of
mask and hooded domino was, for
all its simplicity, an effective
disguise.

14

15

1-8. Bath became a fashionable

watering place in the late eighteenth century, and one of its great
attractions was the social life.
Because many visitors to Bath
stayed in small rented houses or
inns, they relied on the balls in the
assembly rooms for entertainment.
Thomas Rowlandson (British,
1756-1827) wittily captured the
mood and personality of the place
in this drawing of about 1798.

16

carriages coming from Paris thronged the roads

and jammed the courtyard. Balls in the state
apartments at Versailles, unlike more exclusive
court festivities, were among those open to the
properly costumed public, and on this evening
Paris had been turned upside down for swords,
masks, dominos, shepherdess costumes, real
and artificial jewels. Crowds flowed through the
Galerie des Glaces and the seven other reception rooms, each of which had its own buffet and
band. The queen entered, draped with pearls:
the dauphin and the dauphine, unmasked, were
costumed as a gardener and a flower seller.
Finally, the door to the Oeil de Boeuf opened for
the king's entrance, and the crowd shuffled and
pressed closer. There emerged, not one man,
but eight, costumed identically. The king, to
guard his anonymity for one evening, had
enlisted seven of his courtiers to be dressed as he
was, each in the impenetrable guise of a clipped
yew tree.
Which one was the king? One lady put up
with a great deal of scratching from twigs, only to
find that she had guessed wrong. When one yew
tree was seen to devote itself to Mme d'Etioles

(dressed as Diana the huntress), the court drew

its conclusions. She would, it seemed, despite
her Poisson birth, be the king's next mistress.
He made her the marquise de Pompadour,
and she underwent a rigorous indoctrination in
court etiquette. Despite her enormous charms,
or because of her now-enormous power, she
would have enemies at Versailles for the rest of
her life, but she made the king happy.

The Romantic Englishman

In the golden age of the aristocracy, Jeanne
Poisson had scaled the heights by the only route
open to her. A man could be a brilliant soldier or
politician; a woman could flutter her fan and
bewitch someone powerful. It was not only in
France that this was possible; the opportunities
were even better in England. For in England,
the mesalliance was as much an aristocratic tradition as the grand tour.
London of this era was unlike Versailles in

~~)t~-~-)~,~~

"/had ever so many chances ofdancing, but only did 3 times,

what with the valses, galops, and being jilted twice."
-Diary ofLady Frederick Cavendish,
28June1859

SOCIA

~ M,/, c!JI- /i,r_~

Y.

~
~

TO

.J~E

D A BALL AT THE HO

T,

VITED

OF J ,

A KLEY, ON TR 'RSDA.Y EVE 'I 'G NE T, AT

HALF PAST SIX

o CLOCK.

Fishkill, May 6, 1813.

)(r->HGAZLAY, PRINTER,

that the nobles, and not the king, dominated the

social scene. The great aristocratic families had
their country estates, and when they came up to
town, they stayed in such splendid mansions as
Devonshire House and Spencer House. There
were myriad balls and myriad scandals, and
though everybody who was anybody may have
been aware of them all, they took on a sort of
independence of one another that never would
have been possible in closely regulated France.
So eighteenth-century English social history is
diffuse and episodic, a great amalgam of remarkable incidents.
The exploits of the Gunning sisters, Maria
and Elizabeth, were so extraordinary that
Horace Walpole claimed that "the luck of the
Gunnings" had become an Irish proverb. He
wrote, in a letter to Horace Mann: "These are
two Irish girls of no fortune, who are declared
the handsomest women alive. I think their being
two, so handsome and both such perfect figures,
is their chief excellence; ... however, they can't
walk in the park, or go to Vauxhall, but such
mobs follow them that they are generally driven
away."
They were not driven away, however, from
the house that the earl of Chesterfield had spent
five years building in remote Mayfair, one of
the most splendid houses in London. With its
gardens, its glorious marble staircase, and its
French-style moldings and paneling, the house
caused enormous excitement. When Lord
Chesterfield sent out invitations to what Walpole
called "an immense assembly ... to show the
house which is really most magnificent," all of
London society planned to go. The Gunnings
had been in London for a year, and Maria had
attracted the attentions of the earl of Coventry, a
sober young man.
By the evening of Chesterfield's ball, Maria

. ALL.

had very nearly snared her man. Elizabeth, it

seemed, had enraptured the duke of Hamilton,
"hot, debauched, extravagant, and equally damaged in his fortune and person:' at a masquerade
at the King's Theatre in Haymarket a month
earlier. Elizabeth was to go to Chesterfield's as a
sultana, but in the end let Maria have her jeweled costume and went in the simple garb of a
Quakeress. This demure clothing did not discourage the duke of Hamilton, however; he was
unable to take his eyes off Elizabeth all evening.
Walpole, in another letter to Horace Mann,
said, "Duke Hamilton made violent love at one
end of the room, while he was playing at pharaoh
[faro] at the other end ...." He lost a thousand
pounds at cards, and his heart as well, for two
nights later he found Elizabeth at home alone,
her mother and sister having opportunely gone
out. Henry Fox wrote, "I fancy he tried what he
could do without matrimony. But at one o'clock
(not prevailing, I suppose) sent for his friend

w!~K.

I
~

:&WBtTBQH.)-'-)7)->7->->~
1-9. Though France and England
might rollick under the reigns of
regents and emperors, social America was still in its earnest provincial
phase, where early hours and modest entertainments were standard.
Waltzing would not reach Fishkill,
New York, for decades after this
"social ball" took place.

1-10. The young lady at the piano,

below, has been pressed into service
to provide music for the dancers at
an American ball about 1815. Perhaps the young men clustered
nearby are paying her meaningful
compliments .on her playing, or
perhaps they are only avoiding
dancing, as the older set at the card
table is doing.

17

Lord Home out of bed ...." The couple was_

married that night at Mayfair Chapel with, Walpole says, a curtain-ring as a wedding ring; "and
what is more silly, my Lord Coventry declares
that now he will marry the other." This is precisely what he did.

The Democratic Experiment

As one commentator remarked, America's classes represented the social cake with the icing left
off. Careers like those of Mme de Pompadour
and the Gunning sisters were virtually impossible since the strong Puritan strain made the
concept of mistresses reprehensible. Even dancing had been frowned on; Boston had expelled a
dancing teacher as recently as 1686. But democratic idealism could not hold out forever against
the deep-rooted human desire to differentiate
between classes, and dancing provided an excellent mark of rank. It was wholly nonutilitarian.
Furthermore, the complex minuets and country
dances of the eighteenth century required study.
Study implied leisure, and in the hardworking
new republic perhaps nothing seemed more
aristocratic than free time.
So Americans, too, took dancing seriously.
Thomas Jefferson urged his daughter Martha to
practice dancing for three hours every other
day-while at "King" Carter's Nomini Hall in
Virginia, a Mr. Christian drilled his pupils in the
art from breakfast to two in the afternoon and
then again from half-past three until dinner.
Dixon Wecter, in his splendid Saga of American
1-11. Almack's was London's fashionable assembly room, run by a
group of patronesses who distributed vouchers for entry only to the
best bred and best behaved. Gentlemen who attempted entry in less
than correct evening attire were
turned away; Regency dandy Beau
Brummell, pictured here in 1815,
was always impeccably dressed.

18

Society, says the French writer Chateaubriand

claimed that the Iroquois Indians retained their
own French dancing master, a M. Violet.
Society in the United States was deeply
provincial. In a country where very few houses
were large enough to contain ballrooms, it was
natural that the principal venue for society's revels would be public assemblies. The assembly
was an English tradition, popular in such spa
towns as Bath, Harrogate, and Tunbridge Wells,
where it served as the meeting ground for the
social elite, who gave frequent concerts and
weekly subscription balls.
Philadelphia, which was probably America's
most sophisticated city in the eighteenth century, had its first assembly in 1719, and by 1748
some fifty of the city's "best" families had established the assembly as an annual event. The
master of ceremonies, a high-ranking army
officer, would assign partners for the evening (by
selecting numbered tickets at random), and etiquette had it that one should call on one's partner
the following day for a discussion of the evening.
The dancing was taken very seriously; young
ladies often brought a spare pair of slippers in
case they danced through their first, and the
marquis de Chastellux, a French visitor at a 1781
assembly, heard the master of ceremonies reprimand a young lady because she had been gossiping and had missed a turn in a country dance:
"Come, miss, have a care what you are doing!
Do you think you are here for your own pleasure?"
What de Chastellux found even more remarkable about the assembly, however, was how
Americans seemed to assign ranks in their ad hoc
society. He noticed how the French minister

"presented his hand to Mrs. Morris, and gave

her the precedence, an honor pretty generally
bestowed on her, as she is the richest woman in
the city, and all ranks here being equal, men
follow their natural bent, by giving the preference to riches."
It was the very opposite of what would have
happened at the French court or in London,
where inherited rank kept society sorted and
graded. But the power of wealth-the power,.
in fact, of the middle class-was gathering
strength. In another hundred years, the standards set in provincial Philadelphia would prevail in ballrooms everywhere.

Regency Rakes
Of course, the transition from a society dominated by hereditary aristocrats to one dominated
by self-made men was painful, especially in
France. Not that the new republicans were without their own pretensions, or that the life of the

ballroom was forgotten. But it took on a macabre

tone in the social shambles of the Directoire era,
when such excesses as bois d Ia victime appeared.
Only blood relatives of guillotine victims were
invited, and women wore red ribbons around
their throats as an all-too-obvious reminder of
the blade. During the dance, one shook one's
head back and forth as if it were about to roll off.
Napoleon's imperial phase presented a social
dilemma to what was left of aristocratic Paris: did
one give in and enjoy the glittering festivities of
the Tuileries? It would mean acknowledging not
only the upstart Corsican but also his arriviste
friends, with their new titles and vulgar accents.
The pride that had kept the French nobility
isolated at Versailles meant that many of them
simply retired to their hotels particuliers in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain and hibernated during
the political and social schizophrenia that continued to convulse France for decades.
In England, the nobility kept their heads and
their privileges and at the same time maintained
the prerogatives of extravagance that had been
theirs in the eighteenth century. Balls were if
anything more fabulous and life more scandal-

1-12. In jane Austen's Emma dancing after dinner is proposed one

evening. It was "so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole that
everything was rapidly cleared
away, to give proper space. Mrs.
Weston, capital in her countrydances, was seated, and beginning
an irresistible waltz; and Frank
Churchill, coming up with becoming gallantry to Emma, had secured
her hand."

19

1-13. Left: During an evening's romp

at London's Vauxhall Gardens, here
depicted by George Cruikshank
(British, 1792-1878), ladies and
gentlemen of every degree of virtue mingle. The gown of the lady
dancing at the right is decollete,
diaphanous, and displays several
inches of ankle, indicating her lack
of respectability.
1-14. Below left: When the young and
handsome Prince of Wales visited
New York in 1860, the American
reception was overwhelmingly
enthusiastic. Nearly a thousand
uninvited guests joined the four
thousand legitimate ones at the
October 12 ball, and the floor of the
Academy of Music collapsed (and
was hastily repaired) just before
His Royal Highness's entrance.
Though some of his suite did not
approve of the New York ladies'
manners, the prince reportedly
eluded his chaperons and spent the
hours after the ball in a brothel.
1-15. Opposite: In this painting, Ui
Soim (1880) by jean Beraud
(French, 1849-1936), the young
ladies are "sitting out" between
dances in the respectable presence
of a gray-haired dowager, while the
men in the doorway survey the
goods on display. If the young lady
in the foreground is not related to
the gentleman si'tting behind her
(and if he sits there for much
longer), she can be classified as
a terrible flirt.

ous, given the enthusiastic example set by the

prince regent.
It was hard to go too far in Regency society,
but Lord Byron's liaison with Lady Caroline
Lamb was to shock everyone. It became a very
public affair in London's salons and ballrooms
for most of a summer season. But Byron tired of
Lady Caroline, and when English society dispersed to its country houses, he did not regret
the parting. They corresponded, he temperately, she despairingly, and finally met again at
a ball in London in july of 1813. Caroline was

20

already there when Byron arrived with his new

mistress, Lady Oxford (formerly Caroline's best
friend). Caroline had been an aficionado of the
waltz before her affair but had stopped dancing
in deference to Byron's lameness. Now, as the
band broke into a waltz, she defiantly seized a
partner and began to dance. When, in the supper room later, Byron made a sarcastic comment
to her, she broke a glass, as her somewhat skeptical mother-in-law Lady Melbourne told the
story, "and scratched herself ... with the broken
pieces."

Lady Caroline Lamb's devotion to the waltz

was entirely typical of her, in that it bordered on
impropriety. The seductive music and the scandalously close embrace of the dance made it very
slow to catch on in conservative society. The 1814
opening of the Congress of Vienna was one of
the first occasions at which the waltz was the
dominant dance, and even the British foreign
secretary, Lord Castlereagh, realized he would
have to give in and learn it. Susan Mary Alsop, in
The Congress Dances, tells how he and his wife
hired a dancing teacher when they arrived in
Vienna for the congress, and Lord Castlereagh
was rumored to practice with a chair when his
wife was not available.
The work of the congress went slowly, but
the social pace was frantic, involving as it
did international competition. The Austrians,
English, and Russians entertained as lavishly
as their country's governments could afford.
Emperor Francis I of Austria gave a masked
ball for ten thousand at the Hofburg; Princess
Catherine Bagration, the czar's mistress, gave a
1-16. Above: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt pays homage to a modern
invention in this "Electric Light"
ensemble, created by the Parisian
couturier Worth in 1883 for sisterin-law Alva Vanderbilt's fancy-dress
ball. The evening marked the Vanderbilts' hard-won arrival at the
peak of New York society.
1-17. Right: Cavaliers, duchesses,
and milkmaids cavorted at the
William K. Vanderbilt ball of 1883.
The hostess was dressed as a Venetian princess, her husband as the
due de Guise. The house-for the
ball was also a housewarming-was
permanently costumed as a French
chateau.

1-18. Opposite: From the potted

palms to the gentleman's gloves to
the tip of the debutante's white
slipper, this painting, La Danse aIa
Ville, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
(French, 1841-1919) is a vision of a
perfectly correct evening in a Parisian hotel particulier.

22

select ball for two hundred at the Palm Palace.

Mettemich and his wife gave a ball at their
country villa to which guests were supposed to
wear native costume; Lady Castlereagh interpreted indigenous English garb by wearing her
husband's Order of the Ganer in her hair. Her
whimsicality was condemned as irreverence, a
typical reaction to the outre behavior that was
to become common currency as the century
went on.
The Age of Reason had given way to the
Romanticism of the early nineteenth century,
which was in tum growing into the sentimentality and prurience of the Victorians. The currents of reform that were in the air were
accompanied by a spirit of prudishness and
restraint. The French Revolution had taught a
lesson of sorts to some noble families, who
instituted family prayers and a life of respectability-a concept that would have aroused
contempt in the rollicking aristocrats of the
eighteenth century. In 1802 a man named
Thomas Bowdler published an expurgated ver-

sion of Shakespeare with all the nasty bits

removed. The regent became king, married,
and produced a legitimate child. In 1819 the
duke of Kent (George III's fourth son) had a
daughter named Victoria. In eighteen years, she
would be queen, and the golden age for
heedless aristocrats would be over.

The Machinery ofSociety

The period has taken on her name, but in many
ways Queen Victoria reflected rather than originated its zeitgeist. Earnest, sober, hardworking,
pious, she regarded even the English aristocrats
with misgiving, finding them dissolute and frivolous. But though the bankers and industrialists
of the nineteenth century agreed with her, they
nevertheless wanted to imitate the aristocratic
style. They sent their sons to Eton, bought
estates from broken-down nobles, and swanned
around Mayfair with the best of them, but they
needed a little help. Hence the flood of etiquette books that interpreted such arcana as
how many cards to leave when calling on a
married lady, precisely when to switch to halfmourning, and how to introduce a duchess to a
bishop. In America, the hunger for gentility was
even greater and more urgent. Society was constantly amused by those postulants to the beau
monde who had not studied quite carefully
enough the manners of those they emulated.
Behind the amusement, however, was fear.
In America the standard of class was pecuniary.
People may have fussed about old money and
good breeding, but new money became old
money with lightning speed. Numerous barriers
were erected against the. incursion of the most
newly wealthy-lists, clubs, private assemblies
-but an elaborate code of etiquette was one of
the most effective. Mismanaging any of the
details of polite life efficiently branded the outsiders. As one manual of the era, Social Etiquette
of New York, stated coolly, "Etiquette is the
machinery of society. It polishes and protects
even while conducting its charge. It prevents the
agony of uncertainty.... If one is certain of being
correct, there is little to be anxious about."
It seems hard to believe. Even before a lady
going to a ball had left the house, she had to be
anxious about her dress, hair, gloves, fan, bouquet in its posy-holder, skirt-lifter, carnet de hal,

23

1-19, 20. Overleaf: The man with the

tambourine in Tlze Hunt Ball (1885)
by Julius L. Stewart (American,
1855-1919) is a cotillion leader
who-like a caller at a square
dance-decrees which figures of
the dance will be performed.
Among the portraits Stewart has
inserted into the composition, and
which are identified here in a
watercolor key, are those of Lily
Langtry and Baron Rothschild
chatting in the right foreground.
Key to The Hunt Ball:
1. John Munroe; 2. Geo. Draper;
3. Comte de Jange; 4. Jules
Stewart; 5. Geo. Munroe; 7. Due
de Morny; 8. Paul Stewart;
11. Captain Barcley; 12. Henri
Ridgeway; 13. Cecil Barcley;
14. Baron Rothschild; 15. Lily
Langtry

and hand-cooler. Then there was the additional

encumbrance of the chaperon. The chaperona mother, elderly relative, or sedate married
friend-was a familiar figure in French and
English ballrooms, and growing social pretensions imported her to the East Coast of America
by the middle of the nineteenth century. (She
never did penetrate the western wilds.) As Mrs.
Sherwood wrote in her 1884 volume on etiquette, the chaperon "must watch the characters
of the men who approach her charge, and
endeavor to save the inexperienced girl from the
dangers of a bad marriage, if possible." Unmarried girls were accompanied everywhere by a
chaperon: to the theater, to buy a new hat, to go
visiting, and certainly to a dance. Even there, a
chaperon was separated from her charge only
when the latter was actually swept off to perform
a country dance or a quadrille. The young lady
was returned promptly to the supervision of the
matron, and if the young man wished to chat, he
did sod trois.
So a lady would go off to a ball in the 1880s,
hung about with her little trinkets and accompanied by her chaperon. She would arrive at her
destination, a vast house blazing with light, carriages crowding outside, a red carpet and awning
leading up to the steps. She would leave her
wraps in a dressing room and proceed to where
her hostess and host were receiving. An impressive manservant would announce her name,
she would curtsy and move into the ballroom.
The band was often invisible, hidden in a musicians' gallery or screened by a bower of potted
palms. Little gilded chairs lined the sides of the

26

room, and plaques, ropes, or pyramids of flowers

covered the walls, twined in the chandeliers,
looped the frames of windows and mirrors. One
arrived late at a ball, after having been at the
opera or a dinner or another ball; dancing would
be well under way. One found one's friends,
gentlemen requested dances, one danced a bit.
The music stopped near midnight as a signal
that supper had been served, and the company
moved to the supper room where, at small tables, they were served by footmen. After supper, the cotillion or german would begin.
The cotillion was an elaborate country dance
which could last as long as four hours. A partnerless master of ceremonies managed the intricate dance figures as they succeeded each other.
The dance always involved favors, such as
flowers or ribbons, passed out to the men and
women, who would then, in the course of the
dance, give them to their partners. Many of the
figures of the dance entailed choosing a new
partner, who :would then receive a new favor.
The "mirror figure" featured a girl sitting in a
chair in the middle of the dance floor, holding up
a mirror. One by one, men would dance toward
her and show their faces in the mirror. She would
wipe away their images with a handkerchief
until the one she wanted presented himself. In
the "fan figure" men and women were separated
by a six-foot fan, and ladies fluttered diminutive
versions over the edge of the large fan. The men
chose the color they liked best. The "butterfly
figure" had men literally chasing ladies around
the dance floor with butterfly nets, while the
"four-in-hand" had men "driving" quartets of

'?\lady may, and indeed she usually does, carry her bouquet (and
herfan, also, if it be not suspended by a chatelaine, which it usually is) in the hand which rests for support upon the arm ofher
escort, thus leaving her leftfree to protect her train, provided she
desires to lift itfrom the tread ofheedless or crowdingfeet."
-Social Etiquette of New York, 1887

''lOu see, she comes flirtation as far as it will go. Why, the other
day she actually said to me that a woman could yield almost anything, except the main thing."
-Princess Mathilde, on Empress Eugenie

women (decked with bells) around the ballroom

in a prancing step. Maude Howe Elliott, a Newport debutante, recalled in This Was My Newport
that "girl or boy, your success depended on the
number of times you were taken out;' or chosen
as a partner. The accumulation of favors, worn
on the shoulders or piled on a chair, was a badge
of achievement.
Not all ladies, of course, were popular, and
they might not even have emerged from supper
with a partner for the cotillion. Worse, they
might not have found a man to take them to
supper. In theory, the gentleman who had partnered the lady for the previous dance should
escort her, but he might be otherwise engaged.
(Whim had nothing to do with the lady's accepting; as one manual put it, '1\ ball is too formal a
place for any one to indulge in personal preference of any kind.") Or the lady might not have
danced that last dance. She could not go down to
supper without a male partner and. in fact had
to leave the ball if one did not materialize. If
she did have a supper partner, she then had to
rely utterly on him to see that she was served
properly.
A woman sitting alone with her plate of
chicken croquettes would have seemed terribly
forward. In fact, women had to contend not only
with their fans and bouquets and impedimenta,
but with a bewildering array of proscriptions,
lest they be thought "fast." Punch described the
behavior of the Victorian flirt: "The mere shade,
the very idea of a gentle pressure of the hand as
she meets you in the chain of the last figure of
the Lancers induces you to believe yourself the
favoured one. She is very fond of going down to
refreshment: it removes her from the espionage
of her chaperon. She sits on the staircase outside
the drawing room door under pretence of enjoying the cool air."

1-21. Lady Randolph Churchill

(Winston's mother) was one of the
three lovely Jerome sisters from
Brooklyn, all of whom married
English aristocrats and shared a
taste for Worth dresses. When Lord
Randolph was secretary of state for
India, Queen Victoria presented

Jennie with the Order of the Crown

of India, whose insignia she wears
on her left shoulder. It is set with
pearls and turquoises and worn on a
turquoise ribbon, and Jennie
promptly had Worth make this
dress to match it.

27

1-22. Though the proceedings look

tame enough, this ball for the centennial of George Washington's
inauguration was actually something of a shambles. Very large, and
"semi-public," it attracted an element unfamiliar to most New York
ballrooms. The New York Times
reported that when the supper
rooms opened, "the food was
scattered everywhere indiscriminately-on the ladies' costumes
and on the walls."

The idea was that young ladies were pure and

men were wolves. However, no wolf would want
to take a less-than-pure young girl as his wife. In
order for a girl to find a husband, she had to be
exposed to as many eligible young men as possible without taking any of the bloom off her
reputation. This process was known as her
"debut."

The Girls in White

The French in particular took this seriously.
Young girls in France were educated in convents
and closely supervised; their mothers chose their
reading matter, read their correspondence, and
selected their clothes and their friends. Elisabeth de Gramont, duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, wrote in her autobiography, Pomp and
Circumstance, "There were special concoctions

28

designed for the young girls of our nation.

Everything stupid, conventional, factitious, and
ugly was set aside for them: fatuous tunes, silly
plays, tame conversation, disgusting clothes.
Good girls were dressed in light, insipid colors
and the poorest of materials, and all the touches
that give 'tone' -diamonds, powder, paint, and
perfume-were rigorously forbidden." French
debutantes were presented to society and
danced at bals blancs, which were the sole
province of unmarried girls. At a party given by
Mme de Clermont-Tonnerre's parents, one
mother dragged her daughter away because
"there were married women at this ball!" Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress, made
her debut at a party given for Elisabeth de
Gramont, and describes in her memoirs, The
Glitter and the Gold, her white tulle dress from
Worth, her gloves, the narrow ribbon around her
neck. "A bal blanc," she remembered, "had to
live up to its name of purity and innocence; it
could not inspire the mild flirtations of a pink
ball where young married women were includ-

ed. The men who attended them, no doubt with

the intention of selecting a future spouse, were
expected to behave with circumspection. There
was no opportunity for conversation. A debutante was invited to dance, and once the dance
was over she was escorted back to her mama."
Consuela's mother, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, was enormously ambitious. She wanted
her daughter to marry a European title, which,
given the Vanderbilt fortune and Consuela's
charms, seemed a reasonable goal. So after
rejecting five marriage proposals on Consuela's
behalf, she took her daughter off to London.
Here Mrs. Vanderbilt put Consuelo in the hands
of Mrs. Arthur Paget, an old friend from New
York. Consuelo found her terrifying: "Th~ simple dress I was wearing, my shyness and diffidence which in France were regarded as natural
in a debutante, appeared to awaken her
ridicule."
Minnie Paget was a great friend (and rumored ex-mistress) of Albert Edward, the Prince
of Wales. His set, the fashionable coterie of the
wealthy and dashing in England, had very
worldly tastes, and if Consuelo was to "take" as
a debutante in England, she would have to shed
the jeune jille d marier image. As she recalled,
"Tulle must give way to satin, the baby decolletage to a more generous display of neck and
arms, naivete to sophistication."

Consuelo Vanderbilt made her debut in 1894.

The strictness of the Victorian age had not
relaxed, but the level of luxury had escalated
enormously. A ball was still a formal entertainment for several hundred people, but more
money was poured into every aspect. Suppers
became more elaborate, featuring lobsters and
terrapin and endless champagne. Cotillion
favors were no longer ribbons and bows, but
elaborate and valuable tokens, costing as much
as ten thousand dollars each. At a dance given
by Mrs. George Gould in New York, the favors
were jeweled pins, charms, and rings for the
women and scarf-pins for the men. The music
was supplied by two or even three orchestras, hired perhaps from the opera for a night.
Dresses and jewels were richer and more elaborate; there was even a point when it became the
fashion for American ladies to wear tiaras copied
from the royal crowns of Europe. Count Boni de
Castellane gave a ball in the Bois de Boulogne to
celebrate the twenty-first birthday of his wife,
Anna Gould: it featured the entire corps de
ballet of the Paris Opera, eighty thousand Venetian glass lamps swinging in the trees, fifteen
kilometers of carpet, and sixty footmen in red
liveries grouped together to add a bit of color.
With the extravagance came a kind of silliness. Because the forms of entertaining-indeed, the forms of all social life~ were so rigid,
1-23. A group pauses to show off
their costumes at the princesse de
Leon's masquerade ball. The hostess is seated at the center of the
group, while another famous host,
Count Boni de Castellane, is second from right in a sable-trimmed
cloak. One great charm of fancydress balls in this era was that
guests could wear all their jewels
at once without inviting charges
of ostentation.
1-24. Overleaf The French took very
seriously the task of protecting
young girls from the tarnish of male
influence. Although when they
were officially "out," debutantes
could dance with male partners,
the kind of entertainment pictured
in this painting, Bal Blanc by
Joseph-Marius Avy (French,
1871-?), seemed a great deal safer
for simple recreation.

29

'The young girls were raw and shy, innocent ofpowder and on the
whole deplorably dressed, with their shapeless wispy hair held by
crooked combs. They must wear gloves drawn above their elbows,
and which ofus could afford a new pair nightly? So the not-soclean were worn and we often reeked ofcleaningpetrol. Shoes were
ofpink or white satin and were smudged after the first dance by
clumsy boys' boots."
-Lady Diana Cooper,
" ... my father thought it the sign ofa cad and a bounder ifa man

The Rainbow Comes and Goes

had worn suede shoes or had shiny buttons (instead ofbraid ones)
at the back ofhis tail coat and on his sleeves."
-Loelia, Duchess of Westminster
Grace and Favour
details had to provide the novelty for each party.
William C. Whitney gave a coming-out dance
for his niece where the cotillion included an
"automobile figure": a car, laden with favors,
drove onto the ballroom floor. Mrs. Cornelius
Vanderbilt gave an "at home" at Newport that
involved closing down and bringing to Rhode
Island for one night a popular Broadway show.
Lest the guests be bored, there was also a ball, a
circus midway, a supper, and a sunrise breakfast.
james Hazen Hyde turned Sherry's into Versailles, brought the actress Rejane over from
Paris, and charged the whole party to the Equitable Life Assurance Company, which he had
inherited from his father. A guest entered a New
York ballroom in a small cart drawn by a trained
seal; at Newport, the most exclusive set gave a
"servants' ball" where they impersonated their
own maids, valets, and butlers.

Masquerade Madness

1-25. The white dress ornamented

with flowers, the discreet string of
pearls, the simple hair, and frank
glance are perennial debutante
attributes. Only a Boston girl of the
1890s would have felt it necessary
to add the book.

32

1-26. Opposite: Minnie Paget was

dressed by Worth as Cleopatra for
the 1897 Devonshire House ball.
Her identification with the Egyptian intriguer was appropriate, for
she was reputed to have engineered
many of the era's matches between
impecunious British peers and
ambitious American heiresses.

Pretending you were someone else was one of

the great amusements of the era. Costume balls
had long been popular; they were featured at the
Congress of Vienna; they were a staple of the
louche side of Regency life, with heavily disguised rakes making passes at dominoed ladies
in boxes at Vauxhall Gardens. It was precisely
that opportunity for sexual license that brought
into question the propriety of the form during
the early Victorian period-in New York a
young couple eloped after a costume ball in
1840, and no one doubted that the evening's
revelry contributed to their rashness.
Queen Victoria gave a lavishly spectacular

''I arrived at the Sutherlands impenetrably disguised as a

repulsive baby boy in rompers with a flaxen wig and a ghoulish

babyface mask, then I dashed home and returned as a Sylphide in
white tulle with a wreath ofgardenias. ... Lord Portarlington
and his son were fearfully and wonderfully attired as a Victorian
Dowager and her daughter, no hideous detail omitted. ...
My mother wore a gold mask, gold hair, and said she was the
Last Trump, which, for some reason, was considered a joke in
bad taste."
-Loelia, Duchess ofWestminster
Grace and Favour
'~rt is God; the bourgeoisie are made to take our orders."

-Charles Frederick l*Jrth

masquerade ball in May of 1842. She represented Queen Philippa, and Albert was Edward
Ill, while many of their courtiers came as other
fourteenth-century celebrities. Though the
queen did not leave the ballroom until quarter to
three, it was a stately occasion and not to be
confused with the sort of party where kisses
were snatched in dark comers.
Prudishness and puritanism relaxed, however, and as the century progressed costume
balls became ever more frequent. The Prince
of Wales gave a fancy-dress ball in 1874 for
which Lord Leighton supervised the decor. The
prince himself went as Charles I in a fair-haired
wig and a black hat trimmed with white ostrich
plumes and diamonds, and was thought to look
terribly dashing.
The degree of wishful thinking expressed
in individual costumes was almost poignant.
Americans chose Louis XV, Louis XVI, and
Marie Antoinette as perennial favorites; Mrs.
Bradley Martin, a matron from upstate New
York, actually wore a ruby necklace that had
belonged to the doomed queen of France to her
own costume ball in 1897. Mary Stuart was popular among romantics who looked pretty in
black; ladies who wanted to load on the jewels
might choose Elizabeth I. It was important, too,
to select a character who could be plausibly
dressed in the currently fashionable tight bodice
and full, heavy skirt: Empress Josephine would
not do, though Cleopatra appeared fairly often
in whalebone and satin.
The memoirs of the period describe some of
the landmark balls: the William K. Vanderbilt
ball of 1883 that marked the Vanderbilts' arrival
at the peak of New York society; a Louis XVI
ball at Warwick Castle, after which the hostess,
Daisy, countess of Warwick, became a socialist;
the Bradley Martin ball in New York, for which

34

event the Waldorf decided to wall up its windows to prevent anarchists from throwing
bombs. But the grandest, in the way that only
the English could manage by the tum of the
century, was the Devonshire House ball in 1897.
It was the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond
Jubilee, and the London season had never been
so festive. From the debutantes making their
bows at court to the languid sprigs of fashion
lounging in the window of Brooks's to the Indian
nawabs who had come to pay their respects,
everyone was conscious of just how splendid it
all was. And at Devonshire House, the massive
gray William Kent mansion with its great forecourt on Piccadilly and its gardens stretching
behind, the duke and duchess were planning
their contribution to the splendor. They had
married just five years previously, after an affair
of such long standing that it became respectable,
even though Duchess Louise was married at the
time to the duke of Manchester. When she was
widowed, their liaison was finally made legitimate, and she was known afterward as the Double Duchess.
On 2 July, the duke with his Victorian beard
clambered into his Charles V costume, while the
duchess arrayed herself as Zenobia, Queen of
Palmyra. Sophia Murphy, in The Duchess of
Devonshire's Ball, tells how the eight hundred
guests had been organized into entries, groups
whose costumes were thematically related and
who made a ceremonial entrance together. The
marchioness of Londonderry was Empress Maria Theresa wearing the massive Londonderry tiara known as the "family fender." Lady
Raincliffe represented Catherine the Great, and
in her suite were the duke and duchess of Marlborough as the French ambassador to her court
and his wife; the duchess, the former Consuelo
Vanderbilt, was seven months pregnant, though

1-27. One of the greatest beauties

of the Belle Epoque in France, the
Comtesse Greffuhle was one of
Marcel Proust's models for both the
duchesse de Guermantes and the
princesse de Guermantes in A Ia
&clten:lledes Temps Pmlu. She was
also one of the couturier Worth's
most inspiring clients, as is amply
demonstrated by this gown.

'Tilly Losch asked me to help with her costumefor the Oriental

Ball. It soon became my work ofthe morning. Endless telephoning. What is the address ofthe woman who is so good at make-up?
Daisy would know but is away. lya knows it, lya is away. Boris
would know, or Natasha, or Nabokoff. ..

36

''After creating her costume the whole morning I said 'Now you
are complete. Allyou have to dofor the Ball is glue a sequin
between your brows.' Tilly whimpered, 'But how can I do that?
UfJn'tyou come to the hotel and bring some glue?'"
-Cecil Beaton,
diary entry, summerof/935

''Naturally there have been people who have said that I gave these
fttes as an item ofadvertisement, but I want to destroy this insinuation, which can only have originated in stupidity."
-Paul Poiret,
King of Fashion

1-28. The sleeping figure here may

be a caricature of Paul Poi ret,
whose exotic "1002nd Night" party
set the pace for pre-World War I
fancy-dress balls. The whaleboned
dignity of the nineteenth century
has completely vanished.

37

"Dancing was going on from the bottom to the top ofevery home,
on waxedfloors, on black rugs, beneath lights that were increasingly veiled. Even people who loathed dancing, gave dances."
-Elisabeth de Gramont,
Duchesse de Clermont-Tonneffe
Years of Plenty

1-29. Below: With the dancing

crazes of the 1910s and 1920s came a
rush of attention to technique. The
Arrow Shirt man, naturally, is unassailably correct, down to his gloved
grasp of the young lady's fingertips.

1-30. Opposite: Irene Castle's girlish

charm and evident respectability
made many frightening fashionsbobbed hair, slit skirts, the tangoseem positively reassuring.

tightly corseted under her sea-green silk. There

was an Arthurian entrie, an Elizabethan enhie,
even Louis XV and Louis XVI entrees, led by
Lady Warwick in the dress she had had made for
her own Louis XVI ball. The Oriental entree was
led by the hostess, carried in a palanquin borne
by fan-wielding slaves. The Prince of Wales
wore knee breeches, a ruff, a huge diamond
cross, and a cape as grand prior of the Order of
St. John of Jerusalem; Princess Alexandra, as
lovely as ever, went as Marguerite of Valois.
Lady Randolph Churchill (nee Jennie Jerome of
Brooklyn) was the Empress Theodora of the
Roman Empire in a stiffly brocaded robe by
Worth, while the countess of Westmoreland was
Hebe with a large stuffed eagle on her shoulder.
Many of the guests were prevented from dancing by their costumes; the prince of SaxeCoburg wore a suit of armor and valiantly tried to
keep the visor down in the cause of verisimilitude, but the heat defeated him. Supper
was served in a tent erected near the pond in the
garden; the art dealer Duveen had loaned Louis
XIV tapestries, the ground was carpeted, and
huge chandeliers lit the palm-decked tables.
Late in the evening a crusader and a courtier of
Louis XV argued over a woman and actually
began sparring, as both happened to be armed.
The crusader, with a broadsword, prevailed.
It was an extraordinary evening, and everyone knew there would never be anything like it
again. They did not know, however, that the
world would soon change as completely as it did.
The first inkling of the new dispensation came
from America.

Ragtime
It was only a new style of music, but it sounded

38

1-31. Above: After World War I,

dancing moved into public venues.
The most elegant nightclubs were
as exclusive as any ballroom,
although a night on the town begun
at Paris's Florida might easily finish
in bohemian Montmartre.
1-32. Opposite: Margot Tennant was
the strong-willed daughter of a
Scottish baron who made a notable
debut in London society and married prominent politician Herbert
Asquith. Her brusque, outspoken
manner and haughty looks made
her many enemies. Nancy Astor
used to carry a set of false teeth in
her evening bag as an accessory for
her Margot Asquith imitation.

40

suspiciously like anarchy, and the dances it

brought in its wake were thought to be undignified and vulgar. In the summer of 1910 the
turkey trot was all the rage in Newport among
the young people, and however much Mrs. Vanderbilt might hate the new dances, they could
not be swept into the primeval mire whence they
had indubitably come.
What these new steps lacked was gentility,
but they became genteel when Vernon and
Irene Castle performed them. Sleek, fairhaired, English Vernon and elegant, vivacious
Irene were clearly "our kind, dear." She was the
daughter of a New Rochelle doctor, and he had
been educated in England as an engineer. They
had been stranded nearly penniless in Paris and
had taken a job dancing in a Paris cafe. The
Parisians loved them; how could New Yorkers
snub them? When they came back to the United
States and opened a dancing school and a night-

club, they set fashion after fashion. Irene's flowing dresses that let her move gracefully, her
bobbed hair, and her little lace caps were copied
instantly. And she and Vernon popularized such
dances as the one-step, the Castle Walk, and the
tango, making even this sultry mating ritual look
perfectly charming on the parquet floor of a Fifth
Avenue ballroom.
Waltzes and quadrilles and cotillions had held
sway for three quarters of a century, along with
dance cards and chaperons and visiting cards. It
took the Castles' charismatic yet reassuring
quality to interpret the new dances to a hesitant
audience. At the same time, society had not
welcomed other facets of the twentieth century,
accepting only motorcars and the telephone.
New currents in the arts went largely ignored or
scorned, until some of them, too, were brought
into fashion, notably by couturier Paul Poiret.
Poiret embraced the new wholeheartedly,
whether in fashion or in art. Among his friends
were such artists as van Dongen and Dunoyer de
Segonzac, who helped him create settings for his
parties. Even Isadora Duncan danced at a Poiret
fete. Though he gave numerous elaborate parties, none was more famous than the 1002nd
Night, which was to bring orientalia resoundingly into fashion.
The guests-a select three hundred-were
invited to come as ancient Persians. Lest they
attempt to infiltrate the party in less than authentic garb, Poiret had, as he put it in his
memoirs, "a squad of old gentlemen in evening
dress, who were no jokers;' examining arrivals.
The uncooperative were sent upstairs to don
extra costumes Poiret had on hand: "I knew the
carelessness of some of my friends, and I had
taken measures to counteract it." The Faubourg
Saint-Honore mansion had been disguised as
effectively as the guests, with tapestries shrouding the windows, tents, fountains, courtyards
covered with sand, even an immense golden
cage where the sultan's favorite woman was confined. The sultan, needless to say, was Poiret
himself, who received his guests sitting on a
green and gold throne, dressed in a jeweled
turban and a gray caftan trimmed with skunk
fur. When all his guests had assembled he
opened the door to the cage and the favoriteMme Poiret-stepped out, revealing her costume of pantaloons and a short, hooped tunic
which ladies requested the next day at the Poiret
salon as the "lampshade tunic."
The host had exorcised every trace of Paris
from his house. Oriental rugs carpeted stairs and

courtyards; exotic blue and purple fruit hung

from the trees. Braziers burning incense dotted
the garden, which was alive with parrots, macaws, peacocks, flamingos, and ibis. There were
strolling musicians, dancers, sweetmeat sellers,
and strange Eastern foods and liqueurs. A fortune teller, a potter, a pythoness, and a monkey
merchant hung all over with tiny, chattering
marmosets entertained the crowd. In one long,
dark, cavernous room the only light came from
the illuminated bottles of liqueurs. Slaves and
houris lounged conspicuously on cushions scattered on the ground, ignoring the fireworks that
frightened the monkeys so much that they broke
their chains and scampered over the roofs of the
neighboring houses.
The phantasmagoria of the 1002nd Night was
a far cry from the Devonshire House ball, and
when a Vogue reporter asked couturier Charles
Worth what he thought of the new fashions
Poiret had launched that night, Worth called the
style "vulgar, wicked, and ugly!" But Worthwho had made many of the costumes for the
London ball-was a man of the Old World. He
was fighting a rear-guard action. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, one of Newport's grandes dames, gave
a fairy dance in 1913, and though it smacked a bit
more of the wholesome American character
(with a witch on a broomstick flying through
the ballroom and black cats, hobgoblins, and
sheaves of wheat as decorations) the Poi ret influence was evident in Natalja Willard's rosetrimmed lampshade tunic. Harper's Bazar even
ran, a few months later, a series of photographs
of Oriental costumes that had graced sundry
New York balls. Turbans, tunics, and pantaloons
were omnipresent that season.

The Jazz Age

World War I did not necessarily bring a hait to
dancing. Though the social scene petered out in
war-ravaged Paris, in London a shadow of the
season went on as usual-or nearly. Lady Diana
Cooper would go from assisting at an operation
in the hospital temporarily occupying her parents' house to a ball in one of the few houses still
open for socializing. A rich American rancher
named George Gordon Moore was so entranced
by Lady Diana that he gave a series of dances for
her, featuring jazz bands and champagne and

41

l-33. The three illustrations above

were first published in Eve: The
UJdy's Pictorial in 1925.

42

heaps of flowers. They were dubbed "dances of

death," since there was no telling who would be
alive when the next one was given.
Considering that atmosphere and the extraordinary mortality rate in both the French and
English upper classes, it was no wonder that the
parties after the war had a very different tone.
Before 1914, luxury and beauty and looking
divine were still crucial considerations, even to
the more progressive socialites like Poiret. After
the war, being amusing was all that counted. A
woman like Elsa Maxwell was a purely postwar
phenomenon.
She was fat and she was plain and she came
from nothing. But Elsa Maxwell could give brilliant parties. They were full of surprises, and no
one was permitted to stand on his dignity: dignity was at a discount in the twenties. Georgina
Howell's In Vogue lists Maxwell's seven rules for
a good evening's fun, the first of which was
ruthlessness about the guest list (no lame
ducks). Then, she said, guests should not be
allowed to do what they want but should be
made to do something entirely different. Rooms
should be too crowded, too bright, and noisy.
The host should never appear uneasy about how
the party is going, but should try to stir up some
enmity in the room. And voi/0, things would go
swimmingly.
One of her most famous fetes was a Parisian come-as-you-were evening; guests were
pledged to arrive in the state they were in when
the invitation (hand delivered, at unexpected
hours of the day) had reached them. Lest they
be embarrassed by taking public transport to the
party, buses with cocktail bars were provided. It
wasj~st as well; there were women in slips, men
in haimets, a lady with exactly half of her face
made up, a gentleman in evening dress but without his trousers, and another in his dressing

gown with half of his face shaved, the other half

still covered with shaving cream.
Not all of the costume balls of the era stressed
irreverence to the exclusion of elegance. Comte
Etienne de Beaumont gave a famous costume
ball with a different theme each year. In 1929 the
theme was opera, and from ten until midnight
various entries entertained the rest of the guests
who were dining. The Faust entrie featured a fat
man singing falsetto, dressed as Marguerite in
blue satin and a yellow wig. The Valkyrie entree
was so striking it had to do an encore, and the
Moulin Rouge entrie included Comte Armand
de Ia Rochefoucauld as the moulin itself with a
windmill on his head. At midnight all the guests
went outside to watch the fireworks, and in the
garden certain guests were dressed up as exotic
shrubs-a recurring motif in the French imagination, perhaps. The same season, the vicomte
and vicomtesse de Noailles gave a party to which
their guests were to wear materials not usually
used for clothing. They came in rubber and
raffia, celluloid and wood, rope, paper, mica,
and tin. One couple in marbleized oil cloth were
marble statues; Mme Eloui Bey wore a Lelong
dress made of pieces of mirror.
Through the twenties and thirties, the costume fever continued in both Paris and London.
Elsa Maxwell and Daisy Fellowes gave a party to
which the guests had to come as someone everyone else knew; Cecil Beaton was Elinor Glyn
and Chanel got a rush of business from young
men who wanted gowns to dress up as ladies
about town. At the duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre's, Princesse Violette Murat brought in an
entree that was a Harlem wedding party; she was
the mother of the bride. English parties were no
tamer. At the duke and duchess of Sutherland's
in 1926, the marquess of Blandford was a female
English Channel swimmer, Lord Birkenhead

1-34. /.41'. Not all nightclubs were

elegant, and during Prohibition
speakeasies and othe r dens of iniquicy became popular. The kind of
place painted he re by Howard
Thain (American , born 1891) was
o ut o f bounds- and thus doubly
appealing- to debutantes and girls
of good family.

1-35. Rig/rr. Fo ll owi n~ in the steps of

Irene Castle. Mrs. Blaine Ma llo n, a
young society matron a nd junior
League membe r in WashingtOn,
D .C .. rehearse s the tango step that
she and he r partne r. Mr. Paul
Wrangel, plan to perform at the
junior Le ague Patc hwork Ball.
1-36. Bt/Ofli': An illustration from
l.B Guu11ult Bon Gmr7, 192 1.

43

was Captain Hook, Lady Diana Cooper was a

French revolutionary, and the hostess began the
evening dressed in feathers and ended as a
wooden soldier. Her thunder was stolen, however, by the eight ladies who "rowed" into the
ballroom-boat and all-as the Eton crew,
coxed by Duff Cooper. Finaily, in 1939, Mrs.
Louise Macy gave a ball in Paris at the Hotel
Sale. Janet Flanner, writing for The New Yorker,
called it "the most inventive and best big party"
of the season. Guests were requested "to wear
diadems and decorations, and no nonsense
about their not having any." Finally, the conventional garb of the nineteenth century had itself
become a costume.

''Everyone used to say that dances bored them; especially those

young men . .. wko neverfailed to respond to an invitation, and
stayed, night after night, to the bitter end. Such complaints were
made rather in the spirit ofpeople who grumble at the inconvenience they sufferfrom others falling in love with them."
-Anthony Powell,
A Buyer's Market

Hotels, Nightclubs, and

Places of III Repute
The war had changed more than sartorial habits,
and the new dances popularized by the Castles
did not remain the new dances for long. In fact,
after the war society everywhere underwent a
dancing craze, what Loelia, duchess of Westminster, in her memoir Grace and Favour, called
"the aftermath of the short-leave-from-France
frenzy." During the war, soldiers on leave had
been privileged beings. If they wanted to dance
at teatime, then society girls were more than
willing to oblige. If they wanted to hold a young
lady closer than she was used to being held, how
could she say no?
It made mothers very nervous to have their
daughters dancing in public places. No matter
that the Ritz was ultrasafe, and that one could
not get into much trouble fox-trotting around
while the Lapsang Souchong cooled in the teacups. It was the nightclubs that were more worrisome, and perhaps with good reason. In New
York, Prohibition cramped the legitimate style
and made thrills a little decadent. "Slumming"
in Harlem often topped off an evening begun
sedately enough at the Four Hundred. In Paris,
similarly, a dancing evening might start at
a glossy club such as Florida and end up in
Montmartre at Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
Some of the nightclubs were actually members' clubs, like, for example, the famous
Embassy Club in London. The decor-big mirrors, bright lights, and red banquettes-was
unimaginative, but the food and wine were
impeccable, and the band, led by Bert
Ambrose, was "the best in London;' according

1-37. Opposite: Princess Marina of

Greece, duchess of Kent, here photographed by Horst (American,
born 1906), was one of the most
glamorous and least stuffy members of the English royal family. At
a coming-out party in the 1950s,
she took off her heavy diamond
tiara and handed it to the bandleader, who placed it on top of the
piano for safekeeping while she
danced.

1-38. One night in 1931 after Loelia

Ponsonby's marriage to the duke of
Westminster, they went dancing at
the Embassy, London's famous
nightclub. En route, the duke
fished from his pocket a gold pin
set with a pair of enormous diamonds, saying, "You'd better have
these. Put them on." A friend who
saw them that night wondered why
Loelia was wearing chunks of glass
pinned to her dress. In fact, they
were the famous Arcot diamonds,
later used as the central stones in
this tiara.

45

'This then is a ball. This is life, what we have been waiting/or all
these years. ... But, alas, so utterly differentfrom what one had
imagined and expected; it must be admitted, not a good dream.
The men so small ana' ugly, the women so frowsty, their clothes so
messy and theirfaces so red, the oil-stoves so smelly, and not really
very warm, but, above all, the men, either so old or so ugly. And
when they ask one to dance, ... it is not at all/ikefloating away
into a delicious cloud, pressed by a manly arm to a manly bosom,
but stumble, stumble, kick, kick."
-Nancy Mitford,
The Pursuit of Love

to the duchess of Westminster. "Of course I

went to the Embassy whenever I got the chance;
only an angel could have stayed away." The
clientele was as top-notch as the music and the
food; the four corner tables were usually reserved for the Prince of Wales, the Mountbattens, the duke of Westminster, and ex-King
Alfonso of Spain. As Margaret, duchess of
Argyll, put it in her autobiography, Forget Not,
"Everybody in the room knew everybody. The
women all wore their best dresses, the men were
in white ties-at least, until the Prince of Wales
introduced the fashion of wearing the dinner
jacket in restaurants."
The Prince of Wales set social fashions as
well. He and his "great friend" of the moment,
Mrs. Dudley Ward, used to practice dancing
together in the mornings at the Cafe de Paris,
another of London's famous nightclubs. In fact,
he once kept a band playing steadily for an hour
and a half while doing the one-step and the
Charleston with Mrs. Ward.
The new steps-and there were constantly
new step~-required practice. Dances went in
and out of fashion quickly, and demonstrating
incompetence was endlessly shaming. In an
issue of the English llfJmans Supplement, readers
were warned that "the uninitiated onlooker
should not be lured onto the floor by the apparent simplicity of this season's dances. Only study
and practice can enable dancers to assume the
fashionable look of care-free aimlessness ...."
Similarly, in 1920, the Gazette de Bon Genre gave
some pointers: "Do not, Madame, while dancing, twine your left arm around your partner's
neck, no matter how much pleasure you thinkno doubt correctly-this will give him." Instead,
the lady's hand should rest with the little finger
on the center seam of her partner's jacket. And
"it is permitted to add jazz to the fox-trot; abso-

46

lutely forbidden, on the other hand, is the

shimmy, with its suggestive trembling, the whites

of the eyes showing, the mouth all screwed up."
The Gazette de Bon Genre wanted its ladies to
remain ladylike.
The Charleston made this difficult, with its
kicks and shuffles and very short skirts. It did
not appear until the mid-twenties, and was met
-like the waltz and the turkey trot and the
tango before it-with outcries. The vicar of St.
Aidan's, a church in Bristol, England, stated
publicly that "any lover of the beautiful will die
rather than be associated with the Charleston. It
is neurotic! It is rotten! It stinks! Phew, open the
windows!"

Brave New lfbrld

Most people objected because they thought the
Charleston would usher in social chaos again, as
the waltz and the turkey trot had been expected
to do. Social chaos, however, had made a firm
landing with the war and was well entrenched.
A world that could clasp Elsa Maxwell to its
bosom, and a world in which girls from good
families took chloroform as a recreational drug,
could hardly resist the advent of washed,
brushed, and monied parvenus.
Witness the career of Laura Corrigan, a former telephone operator from Cleveland, Ohio,
who arrived in London in 1922 and rented a
house from Mrs. George Keppel, Edward VII's
mistress. Rumor had it that she had requested
Mrs. Keppel's guest list along with the lease. Mr.
Corrigan, who took no part in his wife's social
climbing, stayed in the United States and made
lots of money, which Mrs. Corrigan used in the

1-39. This is a photograph by Cecil

Beaton (British, 1904-80) of the
woman who never became queen,
to her great disappointment, and to
the dismay of the American colony
in London, which had bet on Mrs.
Simpson's ultimate success. When
the king abdicated, Lady Cunard
stormed, "Howwuh'he do this to
me!" His wife, as duchess ofWindsor, led a fashionable life instead of
a royal one.

most blatant way to get the guests she wanted.

She would bring bands and cabaret acts over
from the Continent for a night, and her parties
often featured a tombola with elaborate prizes
such as gold sock-suspenders marked with coronets. The coronets, it turned out, were always
appropriate because the tombola was fixed; the
highest-ranking guests always won.
Mrs. Corrigan was a fairly benign manifestation of the new age. More threatening was the
reckless behavior of the young people; they
organized bottle parties and scavenger hunts
where they tore around in cars all night. The
phenomenon of "crashing" was also new, and

highly unwelcome. In 1928, Lady Ellesmere

gave a very formal ball at Bridgwater House,
where guests danced in the huge gallery
beneath paintings by Raphael, Tintoretto, and
Titian. The next day, the hostess publicly
announced that several hundred uninvited
guests had attended the ball, among them the
daughter of the earl of Ancaster and Cecil
Beaton's sister Baba. Many of the parties given
before the stockmarket crash were so huge that
the hostess could not keep track of all the guests.
Occasionally gate-crashers got too cocky, like,
for example, the uniformed ensigns from Newport, Rhode Island's naval base who crashed a

1-40. Plus (0 change: White-gloved

debutantes and their escorts waltz
at New York's Debutante Cotillion
and Christmas Ball in 1948. However much society has changed, no
one doubts that a formal introduction to it, including the pearls and
bouquets and white dresses, is still
a. valid enterprise.

47

1-41. Charles de Beistigui's costume

ball at the Palazzo Labia in Venice
was a landmark party of the 1950s.
The guests' costumes even managed to compete with the frescoes
by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. In
this photograph by Cecil Beaton,
Daisy Fellowes is ''America" in
leopard print.

48

party and were ejected with some difficulty.

''Think of my feelings," pleaded one ensign
m the hostess, who replied firmly, "Think of
mine."
The social mobility in the years between the
wars was best represented by the career of Wallis
Simpson. The Prince of Wales had tremendous
power to bring anyone into fashion, and his
fondness for being entertained guaranteed that
some of his choices might not be the conventional friends of royalty. He went on a safari, for
instance, with Thelma, Lady Furness, the twin
sister of Gloria, Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt. Lady
Furness in turn introduced him to a newcomer to

London, Mrs. Ernest Simpson. No one had

thought much of Mrs. Simpson on her arrival;
she wore her hair in ugly knobs over her ears and
did not seem terribly attractive. But when, in an
ill-judged moment of confidence, Lady Furness
instructed Mrs. Simpson to "look after the little
man" while she was away, Mrs. Simpson did just
that.
It .was a moment of unusual brilliance in
London for Americans. As the prince and Mrs.
Simpson danced discreetly at the Embassy Club
with groups of friends, or gave weekend parties
at Fort Belvedere, California-born Lady Cunard
fantasized about being Mistress of the Robes

when. her friend became queen. Chips Channon, a Chicagoan who had become a British
citizen, married a Guinness, and successfully
run for Parliament, had his greatest moment
when Edward VIII dined at his house in
Belgrave Square. These Americans took the
abdication hard; Lady Cunard was supposed to
have said, "How could he do this to me?"

"Whos Archie Schwert.P' asked Mom.

"'Oh, hes someone new since you went away. The most bogus
man. Miles discovered him, and since then hes been climbing and
climbing and climbing, my dear, till he hardly knows us. Hes
rather sweet, really, only too terribly common, poor darling. He
lives at the Ritz, and I think thats rather grand, don'tyou?'
"'Is he giving his party there.?'
"Wy dear, ofcourse not.' "
-Evelyn Waugh,
Vile Bodies

Dancing/or Dollars
However much Edward might have let down his
partisans in London in the 1930s, he and his
duchess went on to bestow a great deal of cachet
on social events for the next thirty-odd years, to
the extent that their absence could diminish a
party's luster. Charles de Beistigui, for instance,
gave the fete of the decade in 1951. It was a
housewarming for his Palazzo Labia in Venice,
bought for $500,000 and refurbished for another
$750,000. Some fifteen hundred guests, many
of whom were more accustomed to postwar austerity than to frank opulence, arrived at the
palazzo by gondola and barge, dressed in costumes from 1743. (Shortly after the invitations
were issued, they became available on the black
market for five hundred dollars apiece in Paris
and Rome.) There were tableaux vivants, acrobats, a ballet, and two bands, not to mention the
Tiepolo frescoes in the grand salon. The host
changed his clothes six times during the evening, though he stuck to his original shoes with
sixteen-inch platforms; he was only five feet six
inches tall, and perhaps did not want to be
overlooked in the melee. The Aga Khan as an
eighteenth-century noble in a wheelchair, Gene
Tierney in a peasant dress she had rented for
fourteen dollars and Barbara Hutton in one she
had had made for several thousands, Lady
Diana Cooper in silver fabric and pearls, nobles
from all over Europe graced Beistigui's ball. But
the duke and duchess of Windsor were not
there, and in the scant paragraph of coverage it
gave the party, the New York Times took care to
point that out.
They were fixtures, however, at the balls
for the international set and were enormously
sought after for the classic social events of the
1950s, the charity balls. At a ball for the benefit
of abandoned children in 1950, the courtyard of
the Hotel Lambert on the lie Saint Louis was
covered with a dance floor, the windows were

1-42. The de Cuevas ball in Biarritz

in 1953 got even more press coverage than Beistigui's ball; here the
American painter Valerian Rybar is

an eighteenth-century devil complete with horns and red skin, a

very literal interpretation.

49

''Before they danced [at court balls] they took offtheir swords
andpiled them in the passage-as these were mostly hiredfrom the
same shop it did not matter ifthey got muddled."
-Loelia, Duchess of Westminster

''On arriving at a dance, both men and girls would be given a

numbered dance programme. The worst thing that could happen
to any debutante was to have this programme unfilled. To combat
this problem I devised 'the Whigham system.'
''For the first half-hour I would agree to dance with any boy
who asked me, however dim he might be. This obviated the danger
ofblanks in my programme. As my favorite beaux appeared later
in the evening, I ruthlessly filled up the entire programme a
second time."
-Margaret, Duchess ofArgyll
Forget Not

Grace and Favour

turned into little imitation opera "boxes;' and
the duke and duchess gave of their luster. At
New York's famous April in Paris Ball in 1957, the
duke and duchess outshone Marilyn Monroe
and French actor Gerard Philippe, the young
Senator and Mrs. Kennedy, and lovely Mrs.
Winston Guest. They were even persuaded
(somehow) to attend New York's Debutante
Cotillion and Christmas BaU, where one young
deb asked the duke to dance. He said he had
forgotten how to fox-trot.
Of course the Windsors attended only a fraction of the charity balls that filled the fifties, for
the benefit of the Red Cross or the Boys' Club or
the British RSPCA or hearts or lungs or povertystricken White Russians. Night after night,
ladies would step into their bouffant dresses and
their husbands would clasp their necklaces and
off they would go. They would sit at tables of
eight or ten in a huge ballroom. They would
dine, drink, and dance. There would be people
there who were more important than they were,
whom they would try to glimpse. Bright lights,
music, silks and satins, brocade shoes, flirting,
and small talk filled the evening.
Though there were no wigs and the men did
not wear makeup and the music was very different, Horace Walpole would certainly have
recognized the event. But Walpole would have
been shocked at certain aspects of the way this
new society enjoyed itself. Actors and actresses
and men who had begun their careers as mailboys mingled with men and women bearing
titles that Walpole had known. At a charity ball,
everyone had paid to be there or someone had
paid for him; and if one had only to pay to be at
such a ball, wasn't it possible that anyone could
go? If money, rather than breeding or friendship with the host, determined entrance to soci-

so

ety's grandest occasions, then it was clear that

society's world had been completely transformed since the eighteenth century.

Twist and Shout

In October of 1961, society received another
shock. In New York City, at a slightly seedy
nightclub known as the Peppermint Lounge, a
new dance sprang up. It was called the twist. It
was easy to do; the twisting of the hips and the
ankles required little in the way of practice or
skill. A great deal of improvisation seemed permissible. The motions could be construed as
obscene, but the truly shocking thing was that
partners danced apart. The man could be in
one corner twisting away, looking like a corkscrew trying to wedge its way into a cork, while
over in another corner the woman could look as
though she were trying to remove chewing gum
fr~m her shoe. And they would be dancing
together! To the ears of the fifties, the music was
cacophony.
The twist was instantly fashionable. The
dance hall Roseland banned it within weeks of
its emergence. In Paris it caught on very fast.
The White House issued a formal denial that
anyone had danced the twist at a party in
November. It was as bad as the Charleston, or
the turkey trot, or the waltz, and like those
earlier dances it would lead to the decay of
society. Society absorbed the twist, as it has
absorbed other dances, newcomers, and scandalous modes of behavior for two hundred years.
Society continues to dance.

1-43. Countess Bismarck was the

daughter of a horse trainer who
married her father's boss before she
was twenty. Two divorces later she
became Mrs. Harrison Williams, a
fixture on the best-dressed list. Her
apotheosis as countess Bismarck
occurred when she married, in
1955, the interior decorator grandson of the Iron Prince.

Dancing Lessons

I. Rifltt: 1hi- Donu b,

lanin
Engelbrecht ( ;crman ,
16 4- 1756, an engraving of
about 1730. how gcnrlcmcn
learning to dance the minuet.

2. Bt'/()W: 1hi- Comforts of Hath: Privott'

Prortias Pm.lious to tk Ball b
Thoma. Rowland son

.t Abotl": 'lltt' lxuuing / Ltron, an

cngra\'ing after a painting by
Emil Adam ((icrman. 1843- aftcr
188.))

4. uft: '/hi- /)(Jnting Lesson by

jat'qucs-Phi lippc I .cba. (Frcn h,
1707 - 17H~)

52

5. Riglzt: Mr. Owen's Institution,

New Lanark, an aquatint of 1825
by George Hunt (British, active
19th century), shows children
learning basic cotillion and contredanse forms.

. Ltft: 1'k Dancing

on: ftlrt 2, The

Afin~HI,

a colored etching of 1 5
b 1eor e .ruik hank Briti h,
1792- 1 7 )

7. Btlow:

En~rav in ~

from La GtJ'U/11!

dt Bon To11 1920

53

Stages ofthe Ball

1. Right: Wtnter by Alfred Stevens
(American, 1828-1906)
2. Below: Dior ball gown photographed in Paris in 1950 by
Louise Dahl-Wolfe (American,
born 1895)

3. Below: "Les Preparatifs du Bal"

from I.e Bon Genre, 1801

54

4. Left: Les Apprtts du Bal, an engraving after Paul Gavarni (French,

1804-66)
5. Below: Dorian Leigh wearing
an evening dress by Piguet in
Helena Rubinstein's Paris apartment, photographed in 1949 by
Richard Avedon (American, born
1923)

55

6. A/Jove: Tile Allegory Dana by Hans

Lefler (German, 1828-1906)
7. Right: Engraving from Fashions of
London, 1798

56

Stages of the Ball

8. Above: Duel After the Masquerade by

Jean-Leon Gerome (French,

1824-1904)
9. Right: After the Ball by Alfred Stevens

57

The Evolution ofSocial Dancing

by Don McDonagh
In 1914, as the world was edging toward war,
Irene Castle made news of another kind: She
had her appendix out. With her appendectomy,
the growing controversy over the morality of the
dances inspired by ragtime took another tum,
and, as she wrote in her autobiography, Castles in
the Air, "the doctors got into the act. Half of them
tried to prove that dancing had damaged my
appendix and caused the attack. The rest of
them stoutly defend~d both my appendix and
my dancing. Dancing was good clean exercise,
they said, and definitely therapeutic." Since the
Renaissance, social dancing has sparked just
such a combination of controversy and delight
and has been both roundly praised and soundly
condemned.
Before the Renaissance, dancing had for the
most part existed as a somewhat unrefined activity engaged in by the peasantry, but in the fifteenth century, as the world felt the first stirrings
of modem secularism, dance was elevated to a
new status. Those in power saw the dance as an
instructional discipline for their dependent
nobility and as a means of self-aggrandizement.
The forms of court dance that first emerged
expressed socially approved behavior between
men and women, and as these relations changed
so did the dances. To insure conformity to a
strict standard, dancing masters became fixtures
in noble courts. These teachers, ordinarily not of
noble birth themselves, had shown proficiency
in personal performance, and they regularly
reworked vigorous peasant dancing into socially
restrained forms with clear measures and patterns.
The dances were taught to everyone who had
social ambitions, and once perfected they became marks of a gentleman's accomplishments,
on a par with fancy riding (dressage) and fencing
(escrime). One of the qualities that distinguished

58

2-1. Basse danze, or low dances,

were named for the gliding movements close to the floor that were
their most prominent feature.
Dancing was clearly an affair of probity rather than personal enjoyment, judging from the watchful
eye of the local nobleman looking
on from his throne.

Z-Z.f4t: Hops, leaps, and kicks

were excitingly incorporated into
"high dances" performed to lively
tempos. As was customary in the
fifteenth century, men were
allowed far greater leeway than
women in such activity.

recognition of the occasion's solemnity, the courtiers dance a stately

pavane, which not only reflects
their dignity but also shows their
lavish clothing to its greatest
advantage.

2-3. Below: The ball held in 1581 for

the marriage of Margaret of Lorraine to the due de Joyeuse was the
most expensive event of its kind
that had ever been staged. It was
Henri III's farewell to a young man
to whom he had been closely
attached for some years, and in

court dances from the peasant versions was their

international character. Folk dances remained
imbedded in the society that had given them
birth, whereas court dances quite readily
jumped national borders. The Italian basse
danze, or low dances, constitute the earliest
group about which we have any detailed information. They featured walking or gliding steps
rather than the leaps, hops, and kicks of folk
dances. They could be found in England,
France, Germany, and Spain, where local modifications were introduced quite comfortably by

dancers who were not Italian.

In our own time, the classic ballroom dances
display the same international character: the
waltz (Austria/Germany), fox-trot (United
States), tango (Argentina), rumba (Cuba).
Today's dances also follow the same developmental pattern as earlier dances, appearing first
among those on the lowest rungs of the social
ladder and gradually gaining general acceptance. During the process the rough edges are
knocked off, dance teachers standardize the
steps and patterns, and the resultant work is

59

2-4. Queen Elizabeth I of England

loved to dance, the more vigorously
the better. Here, the earl of
Leicester lifts her in the air doing
the volta, a curious dance that
relied heavily on the strength of the
costume as well as the male
partner.

''Many, many with whom I have conversed, tell me that at no

time for the last sixty or seventy years was frivolity, the love of
pleasure, self-indulgence, and idleness (producing ignorance) carried to such excess as now in the Higher Classes, and that it resembles the time before the first French R,evolution; and I mustalas!-admit that this is true."
-Queen Victoria, in a letter to the Prince of Wales

Queen Elizabeth dancing lavo/ta with the Earl

of Leicester.
60

2-5. Opposite: Germany contributed

only one major form to the canon of
court dancing, but it was an enduring one, the allemande, which
traced its roots to medieval times
when knights were said to have
clanked to its stately measures.

included in the repertory of dances offered for

instruction. Few dances actually become classics; most are simply novelties that enjoy a brief
tum on the dance floor.
The attrition rate was equally high among
court dances, although little is known about the
specific forms or even names of pre-fifteenthcentury dances. With the advent of the printed
word during the Renaissance, dance manuals
were printed and circulated, and surviving
examples provide the names and descriptions of
the dances, including at times illustrations and
even the music used to accompany them.
The dancing masters of northern Italy
achieved new status through their association
with such leading families as the Medici of
Florence, Sforza of Milan, Famese of Parma,
Gonzaga of Mantua, and d'Este of Ferrara. Domenico da Piacenza, later known as Domenico
of Ferrara for his service there, is generally
acknowledged as the most distinguished dancing master of the first half of the fifteenth century. In 1416 he published, in Latin, a dance
manual De Atte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi, subtitled in the vernacular De Ia Atte di Ballare et
Danzore. Two of his pupils, Guglielmo Ebreo
(William the Jew) of Pesaro and Antonio Cornazano of Piacenza, published manuals of their
own in Italian in which they developed the principles laid down by Domenico.
These manuals reveal certain preoccupations
that have persisted from the earliest days of court
dancing to our own day of social dancing.
Domenico clearly believed in the civilizing
influence of dance, and he distanced himself
from those who did not. He tried to dissociate
himself from those who would not accept the
discipline of dancing and the restraints it imposed. '?\nd nevertheless there have been many
who were opposed to this ardent and free mobil-

2-6. The half-turned feet, here

clearly demonstrated by the gentleman in fourth position, were
essential to the proper performance
of all court dances during the seventeenth century. Each step began
and ended in one of the five
positions.

ity exercised with great subtlety and discernment as being lascivious and wanton. But the
author [Domenico] argued against this with
righteous zeal, saying that all things are liable
to corruption and degeneration if they are employed indiscreetly-that is, with exaggeration.
It is moderation that conserves." And addressing
the male practitioner directly, he continues,
'~nd note, go/ante, that by the exercise of bodily
mobility, avoiding all extravagance, this gentle
art, I say, will have within itself a natural beauty
and much decorum thereby." With variations,
these are themes that dance masters and instructors have repeated in almost every generation. In
our own time the late William deRham cautioned little boys in his classes that it was
impolite to leave their partners until they "found
another partner or got married." He may have
exaggerated, but the point was made and
remembered.
Domenico set down his thoughts on dancing
in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the
era of the basse danze, which were performed
everywhere substantially as Domenico described them. Because these serene and gently
undulating dances depended on lifting the heels
slowly and lowering them quickly, Domenico
likened the motion to that of a double-oared
gondola cresting and dipping quickly into the
trough of the next wave.
He referred to the rhythm as the "queen of
measures;' unlike others such as the piva, a
rapid measure used by the peasants (vii/ani) for
their dances. The stately, deliberate pacing of
the basse danze may resemble the motion of the
gondola, but it can be traced to the measured
gait of the camel. The dances' measure was
adapted from camel driver chants, which had
entered the mainstream of Moorish music. During the three centuries of near-total Moorish

61

2-7. The sense of pastoral elegance

was part and parcel of aristocratic
dancing. Jean-Antoine Watteau
(French, 1684-1721) regarded the
dance as a metaphor for all earthly
pleasures.

62

domination of the Iberian peninsula, this basic

rhythm influenced the Spanish musical tradition. Even today the word arabesque("in the arab
manner"), in the vocabulary of classic ballet, an
offshoot of court dancing, recognizes a Muslim
source. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Christian Spain recovered much of its
northern territory, commercial contacts between
Barcelona in Aragon and the ports of northern
Italy were steady and substantial. The Aragonese royal family eventually added Naples
and Sicily to its suzerainty, and Spanish families
such as the Borgias settled in Italy, bringing with
them cultural as well as commercial influences.
By Domenico's time, basse danze in various
forms were firmly established in both Italy and
Spain.
Also firmly established were the five basic
foot positions that began or ended all of the steps

in the basse danze and subsequent court dances.

Unlike the normal parallel positions of the feet,
in the dance positions the toes were turned
outward to form an angle of 90 degrees so that
the legs were seen in half-profile instead of
straight on. By the eighteenth century, when
professional ballet emerged from amateur court
dance, the turnout was established at 180 degrees, showing the legs in full profile.
Dances customarily began with a reverence,
or bow, during which the man removed his hat
and extended his left leg forward; being closer to
the heart, the' left leg was considered more gallant. The woman's complementary curtsy and
arm movements were more restrained. When
the sequence of dance steps was accomplished,
the dance ended with a less elaborate reverence.
The steps-"singles;' "doubles;' "continenzas;'
and so forth-were standardized, and a writer

could describe a dance by listing them in proper

sequence and indicating the number of repetitions. After a bassa danza, it was customary to
perform the saltarello, a court dance of different
mood. The Spanish called it alta danza (high
dance) to emphasize the liveliness that characterized its swaying movement and little jumps.
Throughout the history of social dancing,
there have been two basic groups of dances.Low, gliding, and turning steps provide the
vocabulary of one group, from the basse danze
through the waltz, fox-trot, and twist, while
jumps, kicks, and hops characterize the other
group, starting with the saltarello and including
the polka, Charleston, and Iindy hop. The
proud, ambitious Renaissance man acquired a
thin veneer of manners through the steady
application of such formal exercises.
The basse danze persisted for a century and a
half, owing their longevity to their adaptability.
In southern France in the sixteenth century, one
such adaptation was the branle. It took its name
from the French verb branler, meaning to shake
or wag, and was characterized by a swinging,
balanced, side-to-side movement, performed
with speed and an evenly timed lifting and
lowering of the heels. The couples were now
linked in horizontal lines, all doing the same
step at the same time. Because there were twice
as many measures per minute, the group was as
lively and vigorous as a unison precision team.
A beautiful walking dance of the time was the
pavane, alternatively given Italian or Spanish
origins by dance historians. Because the word
pavane seems rooted in the Spanish pavo (peacock), the balance tips in favor of Spain, and
certainly, the spirit of the dance seems to convey
the sense of peacocks preening. One form of the
dance is a processional in which a line of couples, colorfully dressed for a grand occasion,
performs such functions as escorting a young
bride to church or opening a court ball.
However beautiful it may be, the pavane did
not lend itself to many modifications. Dances
that introduce a new rhythm are most likely to
inspire development. The branle was such a
dance, becoming the central developmental
form of the sixteenth century. Like the basse
danze, it was easily modified, and there were
soon sprightly versions that involved kicking
steps as well as hops and turns. A particular
favorite, named for a province of southern
France, was the branle de Poitou, which had
small, light, delicate steps and would itself
evolve into the minuet.

With the branle, there was a shift to France as

the center of the dance world. By the end of the
sixteenth century, most of the court dancing
masters were French instead of Italian, and a
French priest, jehan Tabourot, had published
one of the most respected manuals on court
dance and the mores of his time. In 1589, using
the anagram pen name Thoinot Arbeau, Tabourot completed his Orchisographie ("dance-writing" ). He was sixty-nine years old and died the
same year. A local publisher in the town of
Langres found the manuscript among the vicar's
papers and, with the permission of the family,
published it posthumously later in that year.
As a thorough Renaissance man Tabourot
used the Socratic dialogues as his teaching
model and invented a mythical young pupil
named Capriol with whom to converse. The
name itself is a play on words: a capriole was a
specific type of high jump. In response to the
young man's "questions;' Tabourot describes the

2-8. During the Renaissance dancing masters relied on verbal

descriptions, but subsequent
teachers continually sought more
precise methods of describing specific dances. The floor patterns
and step indications of the Beauchamps-Feuillet system were
widely used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

63

2-9. The woman's fan became an

essential tool in the ballroom. This
fan was also used to display a panoramic view of aballlike those at
which it was probably used.

64

dances he performed as a young man or

observed during his long life. As he proceeds, he
tosses in witty and perceptive comments about
manners and customs of the time.
That a priest in good standing with his church
should write a text on this subject is unusual.
Perhaps Tabourot's use of a pen name and his
failure to publish during his lifetime reflect
something of the ambiguous attitude of ecclesiastical authorities toward dancing, for the
practice had been alternately condemned and
permitted. Tabourot cited scripture as precedent; after all, King David danced before the
Ark of the Lord, and weddings and other
(unspecified) rites in religious festivals were celebrated with dancing. Exhibiting a peculiarly
French testiness, Tabourot lashed out at disapproving reformers by suggesting that they be fed
a vile-sounding concoction of goat's-meat pie
prepared without bacon.
He further defends dancing on practical
grounds as a test of a young man's or woman's
health. He even approves of a postdance kiss
that draws the couple close enough to ascertain
the partner's shapeliness and detect any unhealthy odor like "bad meat." Finally he observes that dance is an essential part of a wellordered society. He sounds the same themes
that Domenico of Ferrara had expressed over a
century and a half earlier. Obviously, dancing
continued to pose a problem to moral authori-

ties. In addition to descriptions of the older

dances and over a dozen branles, Tabourot mentions the allemand (alman), courante (coranto),
canary, gavotte, morris dances (morisque), volta
(lavolta), and several galliards.
Across the English Channel, the courtiers of
Queen Elizabeth I danced vigorously, none
more enthusiastically than the monarch hersel
It was said that she performed a half dozen or so
galliards before breakfast each morning, and in a
woodcut she is shown dancing the volta with the
earl of Leicester. At the time, this hopping and
leaping dance was considered rather daring, for
the man placed one hand about his partner's
waist, the other on her stomach, and boosted her
high in the air with his thigh under her buttocks.
(One wonders what the peasant original of this
dance was like if this was the toned-down version!) The woman steadied herself by placing
her right hand on her partner's shoulder, using
her left hand to hold her skirt, as the queen does
in this woodcut, and to keep from exposing a
knee or even a thigh.
Even the tolerant Tabourot was somewhat
dubious about the .volta, wondering whether
honor and health might not be compromised.
His pupil Capriol suggests that such dancing was
not proper for gentlefolk but was acceptable
when dancing with a strapping hussy. The
English coun did not mind the dance at all. It
was but one of many sprightly dances that was

~idely

performed. Shakespeare mentions the

pavane, canary (caneri), passemezzo (passy
measures pavyn), courante (coranto), gigue
Gig), and, of course, the galliard.
Elizabeth I liked to see her courtiers dance
the lively galliard as energetically as possible.
One five-step sequence (cinq pas became sink-

a-pace in English) included a final high leap,

known as a caper, with both feet leaving the
ground. Hence the saying "to cut a caper," which
in our time has evolved from its precise original
meaning to include all frolicsome leaping and
dancing.
During the seventeenth century, the galliard

2-10-lZ ..Be/oav: The introduction

of liberated touch dancing at the
end of the eighteenth century set
a new style for the nineteenth in
the ballroom. Feet were no longer
turned out, and partners embraced
in public, much to the horror of
traditionalists.

65

2-13. This set of instructional pictographs, which starts with a gracious invitation and ends with an
exhausted exit, was used to teach a
country dance in an eighteenthcentury dancing manual.

66

fell from favor and was replaced by the courante

and saraband as the most popular dances at the
French court. The courante gained favor as a
running-step alternative to the bouncy galliard,
and the dignified, processional saraband suited
Louis XIII "Le Just" admirably.
With the saraband's somewhat checkered
past, the road to court was a long one. The dance
is thought to have originated during the twelfth
century in Spain, when the country was under
Moorish domination. According to legend, it
was named by a devil disguised as a woman. Its
association with notorious courtesans led to its
suppression for a time by King Philip II of Spain.
A disapproving commentator, Pedro Marianna,
condemned the saraband as lascivious, ugly, and
a disgrace to Spain, but by the turn of the seventeenth century, the dance was enough like a
pavane to be performed without scandal and to
become quite fashionable.
For two centuries-from 1500 to 1700while profound changes had occurred in dance,
there were corresponding changes in music.
The dancing masters required precise beats and
measures in order to standardize and record their
dances. Most dancing masters were also adept at
playing an instrument and arranging folk airs in
suitable dance form. The earlier dances were
accompanied at times by songs or by a single
wind or stringed instrument and a drum. Later,
the numbers and variety of instruments grew.
Professional composers seeking employment at
various courts developed great skill at arranging

and creating original melodies in the requisite

dance rhythms. They also developed the musical suite to add balance and variety to court
dancing. Originally these suites included the
allemand, courante, saraband, and gigue. Later,
five- and six-part suites, including the minuet,
were developed. These independent units
eventually formed an integrated sonata, freed to
pursue an exclusively musical logic without reference to dance or verbal text.
France continued to be the arbiter of taste for
court dancing in Europe until the end of the
eighteenth century. No matter where a new
dance might originate, it received its final form
and polish in France. The courante unfortunately was polished to the point of dullness
under the eye of King Louis XIII. It became
slow and gravely elegant by the time it crossed to
England and was of little interest. After attending a court ball in 1666, Samuel Pepys noted in
his diary "that the corants [sic] grew tiresome."
And well they might, for there were three times
as many courantes as other dances that evening.
The French dancing masters, as an alternative to the tedious courante, offered the delightfully accommodating branle de Poitou,
adding a new wrinkle to it. The light and delicate pas menu (little step) was retained, but the
group formation was broken into couples. The
first couple led the others in an S- or Z-pattern
across the ballroom floor. Later, circular, question-mark-shaped, and other patterns were
developed. While the pattern and dance steps

were firmly set, the dancers were allowed some

discretion as to the sequence of steps and number of repeats each time they performed the new
minuet. (Originally the term menuetwas used to
describe any dance of small steps.)
As Domenico in the fifteenth century designated the basse danze the "queen of measures;'
the French court referred to the minuet as the
"queen of dances." It was the favorite of Louis
XIV, who was reputed to have taken daily dancing lessons. His instructor, Pierre Beauchamps,
was subsequently appointed director of the Academie Royale de Danse, Europe's first professional ballet school. Bows and curtsies decorated
the small, dainty steps of the minuet throughout
the dance, not just at the beginning and end,
with more and more refinements added to the
positions of the arms and hands, until the minuet was the most elaborate and artificial form of
court dancing ever seen.
During Louis XIV's long and successful
reign, all things tasteful and artistically refined
were epitomized by the splendor of the French
court. Versailles not only was the center of
France, it was the center of Europe. When the
monarch and his courtiers danced, they did so
with awareness of their own importance and
elegant dignity. At the beginning of the century,
heels were added to the fiat, soft leather dancing
shoes. Buckles, bows, and ever higher heels, in
evidence in the Sun King's court, were perfect
for the small, measured steps of the minuet.
Soon all Europe followed suit.
The death of Louis XIV at the beginning of
the eighteenth century represented the end of
France's most glorious hour, but the rpinuet persisted. It was still danced at court, but Louis XV
was not so self-consciously dignified and sought
lighter diversion in the frisky contredanse (country dance) imported from England. The couples
faced one another in rows or formed circles,
performing such variations as the quadrille and
cotillion, which shared the same lively, lighthearted character as the contredanse.
The artificial gaiety of nobles playing at peasant dances increased in Louis XVI's court,
although the minuet was still an important ritual
at court balls. The political power of the monarchy, however, had been seriously undermined,
and revolutionaries assumed direction of the
government. At the age of thirty-eight Louis
XVI was beheaded. With him died the system of
absolute monarchy in France and the style of
court dancing as it had been known since the
early Renaissance.

''Neither the men nor the women dance well; all stretch out and
lengthen their arms in a way far from agreeable."
-Claude Blanchard, eighteenth-century visitor
to the United States

2-14, 15. The quadrille was a square

dance performed in five different
tempos. Hundreds of variations
were developed in the nineteenth
century to add interest to the basic
pattern.

fi',

67

2-18. Opposite: The North German

galop appeared, here depicted by
Paul Gavarni, after the waltz had
emerged in South Germany
and Austria. Dancers found it a
delightful change of pace and happily incorporated it into their
quadrilles.

2-16. &g/Jt: Elegance and energy

were what made the waltz the dominant dance of the nineteenth century. Johann Strauss, Jr., who filled
Europe's ballrooms with his lilting
melodies, conducted with his violin
bow when he was not actually playing with the orchestra.

2-17. Below: Even in a vigorous

waltz, gentlemen were able to keep
their top hats securely in place.

68

The noble style of dancing persisted in ballet

which, in the hands of professionals, would follow its own spectacular development. In the
countryside, folk dancing continued much as it
had in the past. Social dancing as we know it
today began with the newly emerging middle
class of the nineteenth century. Shreds of manners and old ways hung on, as did the minuet in
various European courts and in parts of the
young United States. However, in the roughand-ready atmosphere of the New World, court
dancing with its reverences and open couple
formations was quickly transformed into country
dancing. The caller replaced the dancing master, and the brief opening command "Honor
your partner" became a pale reflection of the
hat-sweeping reverence of earlier days.
The formality and ritual of European dance

were changing as well. In the German and Austrian countryside, peasants had been doing a
centuries-old closed-couple turning dance
called the landler. It would have been shocking
for people of breeding to embrace so openly in
public, but the peasants had their own customs.
However, this particular dance appealed to the
changing spirit of the times as Romanticism
captured the European imagination. By the late
eighteenth century, a suitably polished landler,
renamed the waltz, appeared in Viennese ballrooms.
Renaissance court dancing had been a formal
and dignified exercise of manners between men
and women. Women were considered maidenly
figures to be approached with courtesy, escorted
around the dance floor with dignity, and not held
closely in public. Romance was a luxury the
nobility could scarcely afford in troubled times
when arranged marriages were one means of
achieving political ends. While the more playful
dances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries expressed a slightly more relaxed attitude,
relationships between the sexes were still quite
formal. Group dancing at arm's length, carefully
watched by the arbiters of manners, was the
norm.
The waltz completely repudiated four cen- .
turies of such dance practice. It was denounced,
deplored, and banned at times for its "immorality" but was irresistible to the independentminded and the newly powerful middle class.
Joseph Lanner, Johann Strauss, and Johann
Strauss, Jr., wrote waltz music of such captivating charm that it was played everywhere. The
waltz became the dance of the nineteenth century. Couples whirled around the dance floor in
private homes and public ballrooms. "Touch"
dancing had arrived in polite society; it was

2-19. The large subscription halls

that replaced private drawing rooms
in nineteenth-century Europe were
exceptionally popular. Competition
for membership in the more exclusive halls was keen, because
members did all the most recent
dances, such as the polka seen
here.

70

engaged in by kings and queens, lords and

ladies, and members of the bourgeoisie.
The waltz so dominated the era that on a
typical program of twenty-four dances, nineteen
would be waltzes. Gone were the turned-out
toes in favor of the natural parallel position of the
feet. Gone were the bows and arm's-length
"truce" position, and gone was the rigid control
of set forms and dance formations. Where logic
and rules had dominated, now the power of
individual emotions determined behavior.
Those emotions propelled men and women into
each other's arms in public, with the closed couple constituting a private world in a public place.
The triumph of the waltz was not immediate,
and modified court dances such as the quadrille,
cotillion, and lancers were widely performed in
more conservative circles. As in earlier dances,
groups of couples, usually four, alternately
exchanged places and followed set patterns of
movement. Allen Dodworth, the most influential teacher in New York, was at pains to emphasize that a dancing school was "not a place of
amusement" but that it instilled social and personal standards. His dance manual emphasized
deportment as much as the proper execution of
the steps of his favored cotillion. Despite such
opposition, another closed-couple dance, the

polka, appeared around the middle of the nineteenth century and was taken up enthusiastically. It combined the turning of the waltz
with a hop step. By the end of the century, the
closed-couple dance had won the day without
question.
Up to this time the United States had passively followed Europe's lead, but the vigorous
march rhythm of John Philip Sousa's compositions inspired an American innovation, the twostep. A simple dance with an exciting beat, it
alternated between an open and closed position
and became the most popular dance of the Gay
Nineties on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dance responded to new musical rhythms,
and when ragtime was heard beyond the "sporting district" of New Orleans where it had originated, it set off a dance craze in the United
States and Europe in the years before World War
I. Nothing like the turkey trot (condemned by
the Vatican, among others), bunny hug, grizzly
bear, kangaroo hop, snake, and camel walk had
been seen in polite society before. With names
more appropriate to a zoo than a ballroom, the
new dances were athletic and bouncy, and the
partners were closer than ever before. It had
taken four centuries for partners to come within
an arm's length, but the distance was diminish-

2-20-22. Choreographic notation

has changed with almost every generation and has often been so complex that only experts can read
it. The 1713 notation system of
Feuillet and Desaix, below right,
looks almost hieroglyphic, and the
careful eighteenth-century diagram
of the figures of a contredanse,
below, looks more like a strategic
plan than a stately court dance. But
the 1945 footstep patterns of Veloz
and Yolanda, right, are completely
legible to our twentieth-century
eyes.

Ill. B\ IC

----j

i0---

Li__l

r---M

,..... .,.4 . . . ..,

...

~
.............

l__l

--.1

lA,~..

/~

I'd
!

.!

! ---_j

r---__ _j

~
~
7

..,,

....

..~..

D.

x
ro

t l t 1 { 5(

.1--

''Why, there are only aboutfour hundredpeople in fashionable

New lOrk Society. Ifyou go outside that number you strike people
who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make otherpeople
not at ease."
-Ward McAllister, in the
New lOrk Tribune, 25 March 1888
71

2-23. The delightful woodcut

below of 1899 by Pierre Vidal
(French, 1849-1929) shows anumber of working-class couples kicking up their heels over the rooftops
of Paris. One woman performs the
notorious show dance, the can-can,
which began as a social dance akin
to the quadrille but became so
high-spirited in music halls and
allowed such profligate displays of
frilly undergarments that it was
banned for a time.

2-24. Opposite: Straightforward

enthusiasm was the primary
requirement for patrons of the less
exclusive cabarets, which were
frequented by pleasure-seeking
Parisians of the late nineteenth
century. Henri de ToulouseLautrec (French, 1864-1901) perfectly captures their dynamic earthiness in his Quadrille at rile Moulin
Rouge, 1892.

'The classes below, from which their children are slowly bringing
recruits, are gradually imposing changes on the etiquette ofthe
classes above; changes which the elders struggle against in vain."
-Vogue, 1 July 1922

ing at an accelerated pace, and in the menagerie

dances the couples danced cheek to cheek!
They hung on each other's shoulders and necks
as they swayed and jogged along.
People struggled to keep pace with each
"latest" dance, learning the steps from such
innovators as Irene and Vernon Castle, the bestknown exhibition dancers of their time. Suave
and elegant, the Castles smoothed out the more
grotesque gyrations of the new dances. People
came to see their demonstrations at popular late
afternoon this dansants (tea dances) in hotel ballrooms. When the Castles had finished the last

72

step of the latest dance, couples swarmed to the

floor to try the new steps. They loved the Castle
Walk and a politely modified version of the notorious tango, which the Castles had encountered
in Paris.
From the same era, that perennial favorite the
fox-trot is one of the few classic ballroom standards that can be traced to a specific choreographer. Harry Fox and Yanszieka Deutsch, one
of the Dolly Sisters, formed an exhibition ballroom dance team that appeared in the 1913 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies. Their staged dance
routine was adapted and slowed down by

teacher Oscar Duryea, eventually becoming the

most popular ballroom dance of the twentieth
century.
World War I had a profound effect on the
structure of society. The role of women was
changing. During the war, they had served in
desk jobs in the army to free men for front-line
duty. Universal suffrage, full property rights,
and recent forays into the business world expanded women's horizons far beyond the home.
Their new freedom was reflected in clothing
that was less cumbersome than the tum-of-thecentury waist cinchers, voluminous dresses, and
tiny hats atop elaborate hairdos. And as ragtime

2-25. A/mJe: The close embrace of

the waltz was further exaggerated
in such menagerie dances of the
pre-World War I era as the grizzly
bear and the bunny hug. Here a
couple does the turkey trot, adopting an attitude of proximity that
looks more awkward than scandalously licentious.

for alcohol that drove some people to foreign

shores for wet vacations. Nearby Havana was a
favorite watering hole, and there many tourists
discovered a taste for the rumba along with their
rum, just as earlier vacationers had learned to
love the tango in Paris. These two dances were
the first of a host of Latin rhythms that would
appear in ballrooms around the world. Tango
songs recounted tales of sadness, disappointment, and despair. The dancers acted as if
locked in a stylized duel, at one moment thrusting and withdrawing legs, at another stalking
beside one another in a restless prowl. The
dance, as presented by the dance team ofValen-

:i~~

;;;-;:.

;~

...

-:.

-~

~-=

,,..,

2-26. Rigid: Irene and Vernon Castle

embodied the style and restraint
that ragtime dances threatened to
drive from the ballroom floor. They
set the standard for decorum until
Vernon was killed in 1918 when his
airplane crashed during a military
training flight.

gave way to the rhythms of jazz, libertine new

dances epitomized by the Charleston also
reflected the spirit of the twenties. Tubular
dresses, high hemlines, and bare arms gave
women an adolescent, athletic look. They
tossed their newly "bobbed" hair and liberated
limbs in high kicks, swung their knees open and
closed, and crossed arms back and forth. The
Charleston was a naughty-and-nice dance that
exactly suited the time and inspired other wild
dances-the black bottom and varsity drag, for
example.
Prohibition also had an effect on the life style
of the twenties. It seemed to stimulate a thirst

74

tino and Rambova (Rodolpho Guglielmi and his

wife, Winifred Shaughnessy), smoldered with
passionate glances and parted lips.
The decade and its freewheeling life style
came to an end with the 1929 stock-market crash
in New York. The country was plunged into a
financial depression that lasted until the start of
World War II. Moviegoers found escape from
everyday cares in the Hollywood musicals, a
form played to perfection by Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers, who became the most imitated
ballroom couple of the time. Outside the movie
theaters, the public found diversion in the swing
arrangements of the big bands. Like ragtime

and jazz, swing inspired a new dance, the lindy

hop, named after Charles Lindbergh and his
solo "hop" across the Atlantic in 1927. As first
performed in the Savoy Ballroom in New York's
Harlem, the dance featured hopping steps, syncopated swings, and lots of turns under the arms
as partners moved away from and toward one
another.
Even more energetic were the aerial moves of
boogie-woogie, a jitterbug variant of the lindy,
which flourished in the forties as the world
fought another war. The high-flying excesses of
boogie-woogie were beyond most ballroom
dancers, however, and the samba, which had an
intriguing Latin rhythm and bouncy upper-body
and arm movements, offered a popular alternative. Thousands of fairgoers saw the samba
performed at the Brazilian Pavilion of the
1939-40 New York World's Fair; the dance also
received a tremendous boost from Carmen
Miranda's appearances in Hollywood musicals.
2-27. Above: No dance demonstrated more accurately the verve of
the "roaring twenties" than the
Charleston. Its sassy athleticism
was a far cry from the dances
Mother used to do, and the
hemline it required was a great
deal shorter than hers.
2-28. Left: The tango was the first
Latin-rhythm dance to gain international acceptance. It was transported from Buenos Aires to Paris
before World War I and spread
rapidly. This dramatic couple is
performing the corte step of the
tangp del amor aboard the S.S. Frana.

75

76

The infusion of Latin dances continued in

the fifties with the mambo, merengue, and chacha, which were popular with adults. However,
in the post-World War II years a new youth
culture was emerging. They performed entirely
different dances that emphasized casual unconcern. The stroll was a group dance resembling a
Virginia reel but performed with walking deliberateness. "Touch" dancing was still the norm,
but in a slow dance such as the creep it was
almost a fossilized shuffling. Rock-and-roll records began to make their appearance on the
best-seller charts, and as the decade progressed
Elvis Presley appeared on the charts alongside
Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, and Tommy Dorsey.
Elvis rode to the top on a new wave of consumerism-a children's crusade of consumption.
Television reflected the polarity of old and new.
Arthur Murray's "Dance Party" featured the
ballroom standards while Dick Clark's '?\merican Bandstand" showcased rock and roll and the
new teenagers' dances. The choice was clear.
In the early sixties, '?\merican Bandstand"
introduced a new performer and a dance that
radically changed the nature of social dancing. When Chubby Checker (Ernest Evans)
appeared on the show, singing and doing the
twist, it was the beginning of the end for "touch"
dancing. The era that began in the late eighteenth century with the waltz was over. Predictably, social commentators denounced the twist as
fervently as their predecessors had lambasted
the waltz or the fox-trot. Dancers swiveled their
hips, pumped their hands, shifting weight from
foot to foot as if they were snuffing out a cigarette. The twist may have started in Philadelphia on a teenagers' dance program, but it
soon broke the social barrier at a nightclub off
Times Square in New York. The Peppermint
Lounge's normally seedy clientele was elbowed
aside as socialites and celebrities crowded in to
hear Joey Dee and the Starlighters sing "The
Peppermint Twist" and to do the new dance
themselves. The twist became the rage, and like
earlier dances it spawned a variety of spinoffsthe frug, swim, monkey, jerk, mashed potato,
and others too numerous to name.
As a new generation of dances held sway, the
old ballroom in its many guises gave way to
another phenomenon of the sixties-the discotheque, or simply the disco. Started in Paris, the
disco was a nightclub that replaced live with
recorded music. Most discos were crowded,
cavelike places that vibrated with music and
elaborate shows of strobes and colored lights.

2-29. Opposite: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers epitomized social dancing during the 1930s. Commenting
on their successful partnership,
Katharine Hepburn once quipped,
"She gives him sex and he gives her
class."

2-30. After the appearance of the

Iindy hop, inspired by Charles A.
Lindbergh's flight in 1929, jazz
dancing became even more exhibitionist during the 1940s, as shown
in this wood engraving by Lou
Barlow (American, born 1906).

77

2-32. Opposite: The more daring

maneuvers of jazz dancing
ultimately appeared on more reputable dance floors. The expression
of the man on the right, however,
proves that their practice was not
without criticism in the 1940s.

2-31. Below: The Peppermint

Lounge in New York introduced
the "no-touch" style of dancing to
eager adult participants in the early
1960s. The shoelessness and
tielessness of the male dancer was
shocking to members of the press
at the time.

From the East Village to Park Avenue, New

York's discos, like the twist, were the new rage.
"Do your own thing" was the battle cry of the
decade, and disco dancing accompanied art
openings, weddings, and every occasion in between. The dances came and went so fast that
dance teachers barely had time to ready them for
instruction. Deportment had definitely taken a
back seat to the sheer pleasure of rhythmic
movement.
Social dancing is a continually evolving form
reflecting ever-changing relations between the
sexes. To a great extent it has reflected the
changing role of woman: from political chattel to
independent individual. Dancing does not initiate change but reflects it. From the beginning, it
has been pursued both as a civilizing activity and
as a recreational exercise, facets that have been
alternately praised and condemned over the centuries. Dance has moved from the Renaissance
court to public assembly halls, hotel ballrooms,
clubs, discos, and private homes, each move
representing a political/economic change in
society. Like these changing venues, the form of
the dance will depend on the spirit of the time.
Measured drilling under the watchful eye of a
sixteenth-century monarch represented its most
supervised state, while swaying and shuffling in
the anonymous mass of a disco floor is at the
opposite pole. Whatever the shape of the dance
or the space for dancing, the dance itself will
continue as men and women will always dance,
moving together, toward each other, to the beat
of the music. The wag who said dancing was the
"vertical expression of a horizontal thought" told
part of the truth about social dancing. Its existence is an expression of sexual relations, but the
variety of its forms and the enjoyment of executing them with style and panache contributes
both to fitness and fittingness.

78

2-33. Rock-and-roll dancing to the

rhythm-and-blues music of black
nightclubs quickly spread to the
young and the restless throughout
the United States. Its fever pitch
has been captured perfectly in this
painting by Joseph Sheppard
(American, born 1930).

79

The Fabric ofDance:

Whalebone andSwirling Silk

by jean L. Druesedow

3-1. The graceful, formal positions

of the dancers in this French scene
engraved during the 1770s owed
something to the structure and cut
of the clothes they wore.

The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,

And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

3-2. Opposite: This late-seventeenth-century Italian engraving

clearly indicates the elaboration of
rich ornament typical of gowns
worn for grand occasions such as
balls.

Act I, Scene 2

80

Romeo andJuliet,

It is in pursuit of such true beauty-especially

that which portends romance-that most costumes for dancing have their genesis. Gala balls
have long encouraged dressmakers to lavish as
much fantasy and illusion as they can in order to
create dresses that achieve the desirable glamour
and allure. If the occasion is to be a masquerade

ball, then even greater license is given, not just

to the participants who can, for a few hours, shed
the conventions that rule their lives, but to the
dressmakers who are freed from theirs as well.
For most of the history of fashion, the ball gown
has conveyed the epitome of fashionable femininity and captured the attitudes of society
toward the woman and the woman's attitude
toward herself and the occasion.
The primary requisite for a dress for dancing
is that it move with the dancer and enhance the
effect of the music and the dance steps. It is the
very structure of the clothes that often controls
movement. The eighteenth-century dancers

81

3-3. Right: These late-seventeenthcentury shoes are made of white

kid embroidered with silk and
metal threads.
3-4. Below: In contrast to a ball
gown, the dress worn at home for a
dancing lesson was more modest
and had less ornament. The shorter
skirt, stylish in the late eighteenth
century, was also more convenient
for dancing.
3-5. Opposite: The elaborate headto-toe decoration on the costume in
this fashion plate of1779 emphasizes the special nature of the
whole toilette appropriate for a
grand ball.

depicted in u Bal Pari aMonsieur de Villemorien

Tila demonstrate the dance posture of the era.
Both men and women hold their backs slightly
arched, shoulders back, arms out from their
bodies (fig. 1). These postures were the result
not only of the dancing master's efforts throughout an eighteenth-century childhood but even
more of the corsetry and cut of the clothes. A
fully boned eighteenth-century corset allowed a
woman to lean backward or from side to side,
but she could not bend forward from the waist
without the heavily boned point of her corset or
its boned shoulder straps reminding her of the
correct bearing. The set of the sleeve for both
men and women had very little fullness over the
sleeve cap at the shoulder, and the sleeves were
placed more toward the back of the coat or
bodice than we are used to today. Furthermore,
the armhole was cut very high and tight. All of
this made it much more comfortable to keep
shoulders back and arms ever so slightly raised.
The shape of the sleeve itself was curved at the
elbow rather than straight as we know it, and this
also encouraged the wearer to keep the arm in
the slightly bent position that we associate with
the posture of the eighteenth century.
Throughout most of the eighteenth century,
women wore a two-piece dress composed of an
open robe worn over an exposed petticoat. All of
the women in u Bal Pari are wearing versions of
this basic costume. The shape of the skirt varied
during the century depending on the structure
of the hoops worn to support it. The elliptical
side hoops, known as panniers, could be hip
length or floor length and could span any number of feet in width. Of course, such panniers
affected the ability of the woman to move, the
nature of the movement, and the amount of
space she occupied in the ballroom. These
considerations must have influenced ballroom

82

Pl.

f,

83

3-6. The French dress opposite made

of ivory-colored ribbed silk brocaded with serpentine garlands and
floral sprays dates to the third
quarter of the eighteenth century.
3-7. Right: While capturing the
whimsicality that so often appears
in ball gowns, this French dress
from 1802 maintains the fashionable silhouette of the time.
3-8, 9. Far right and below: The delicate quality of these two dresses
underscores the romantic attitude
toward femininity that existed in
the early nineteenth century.

arrangements, for when panniers were no longer

worn, the commentary in Go/erie des Modes
includes a note of unspoken relief that "the time
is past when one finds it necessary to specify on
invitations to a ball: ladies without panniers. The
dancers [now] present themselves in short petticoats and adjusted robes [fig. 4]."
Further examination of Le Bal Part reveals
women who wear their petticoats a few inches
off the floor with their robes draped at the sides
and back so that they are above the hem of the
petticoat, a style also depicted in Go/erie des
Modes (fig. 5). At the same time other women in
figure 1 seem to wear the older style with their
robes flowing into a short train. These women
were called "draggers" by the marquise de la
Tour du Pin in her memoirs (quoted in Oliver
Bernier's Pleasure and Privilege).
Shoes such as those in Le Bal Part were made
without a right or left, with pointed toes,
rounded soles, and high curved heels placed
forward almost to the instep, much like the late
seventeenth-century shoes pictured (fig. 3 ). Balancing in such shoes required skill and practice,
and executing the intricate footwork of eighteenth-century dances would quickly separate
the agile and graceful dancer from all the others.
Movement is also affected by the type of
fabric and ornamentation used for the dress.

85

3-10. Right: To complement the romantic ladies, these stylish gentlemen reflect the lasting influence of
Beau Brummell.

3-11. Below: This dress of yellow

silk gauze trimmed with lace and
silk padded piping was made in
England in about 1820.

3-12. Opposite: The fashionable

silhouette of the 1830s with full
sleeves, narrow waist, and wide
skirt is evident in both these
dresses, as are the typical differences between gowns appropriate for dinner and those for
dancing.

The heavy damasks or crisp silk taffetas of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave an
aura of formality to movement. The petticoats
themselves were cut only slightly fuller than the
circumference of the panniers so that the swirling skirts associated with ball gowns of later
centuries were not a factor for an eighteenthcentury dress. The ball gown in figure 5 is fairly
typical; its
bodice, with a very low neckline, is ornamented with embroideries or lace outlining
the seams. The sleeves are slashed and
finished, sabot-style, with lace as on court
sleeves, going as far as the elbow.
The bottom of the robe is covered with a
border of trimmings, like those of the
bodice and tucked up in ~rapery ... with
rosettes and tassels.
The skirt, different in color from the
bodice, is trimmed in Italian gauze worked
and shaped like a garland; the bodice, open
in front, reveals a short doublet like the skirt
whose sleeves are seen through the slashes
of the bodice sleeves [Go/erie des Modes, pl.

66].
The French ball gown in figure 6, which dates
from late in the third quarter of the eighteenth
century, is trimmed with self-fabric called "robing," edged with multicolored silk fly fringe and
rosettes. The elaboration of dresses with all
manner of trimmings is one of the distinguishing characteristics of ball gowns generally. In
the eighteenth century, Rose Bertin was especially known for creating such trimmings, and
her most famous client was the queen, Marie
Antoinette.
Except for the more columnar silhouettes
of early nineteenth-century gowns, the basic
characteristics of the ball gown remained un-

86

3-13. Right: The bell-shaped.hoop

of the 1850s required evening wraps
and coats that were specially constructed to envelop the wearer, as
in the case of the taffeta coat at
the right.

"The hostess is attentive to the ladies, observing ifany timid or

unattractive guest receives a noticeably small number ofthese
trifles. lWth tact she quietly provides her with dances that shall
make allfavors as nearly equal as is possible upon such occasions
ofcompetition."
-Social Etiquette of New York, 1887

3-14. A/Jove: These French dresses

by Pin gat are examples of the wide,
elaborate gowns of the late 1860s.
The circumference of the hem of
the gown trimmed with black lace
is almost twenty feet.

88

changed. In a "Grecian" tunic shown in Costume

Parisien in 1802 the bodice is still exaggeratedly
decollete, and, below the Greek-key design that
borders the overtunic, a fanciful series of roses
sweeps down the skirt to catch the drapery up
just below the knee, allowing the slippered feet
freedom to dance (fig. 7). By the time the waltz
was popular, the Romantic aesthetic had consumed fashion as well as the other arts, and the
silhouette was becoming wider at both shoulder
and hem. Luckily for the dancers, the skirts

were growing shorter and shoes had become

soft, flat slippers.
The two illustrations from Ackermann's Repository in 1823 show the figures dancing-at
least the artist's interpretation of how these
styles moved with the body (figs. 8, 9). Many of
the ball gowns of this time were made of very
light silks or gauzes with skirts only about seven
feet around the hem. Like that of the yellow
silk, ribbon-striped gauze dress in figilre 11, the
hems were often heavily trimmed, here with

large, padded silk piping and white lace. The

diaphanous quality of this dress is also an important attribute of many of the fabrics used for
dancing dresses throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
The fashion plate from Belle Assemblie (fig. 12)
emphasizes the difference between ball dresses
and those worn for other evening entertainments, in this case a dinner dress: the ball gown
has a more revealing neckline, shorter sleeves,
much more varied and elaborate ornamentation;
it is, in fact, an exaggeration of the fashionable
silhouette and stylish femininity of the 1830s.
The coiffure in this plate reflects an attitude that
has persisted today: a grand occasion requires
special hairdressing. In addition to hair ornaments of intricate and imaginative design, the
most spectacular pieces of jewelry in a lady's
possession are reserved for full-dress occasions.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the bellshaped hoop, or cage petticoat, had gained wide
popularity and significantly affected the scope
and movement of the ball gown. The hoop kept
the skirts from entangling the dancer's feet and

brought a graceful, swirling motion to the dance.

Their size, however, like the panniers of the
eighteenth century, required a considerable
amount of space in the ballroom and, despite a
flexible bone-and-tape structure, mandated
space between the dancing partners. In figure 14
the hoops have reached their most exaggerated
form, with the circumference of the skirt at its
hem nearly twenty feet. Also from this midcentury point, most ball gowns were two pieces:
a boned and fitted bodice with a wide, low
neckline and short, tight, off-the-shoulder
sleeves; and a full, pleated, or gauged skirt worn
over the hooped petticoat. Once again the set of
the sleeves coupled with the boned bodice and
corset insured the proper carriage on the dance
floor.
Late in the eighteenth century, Beau Brummell set standards for gentlemen's dress that
were widely followed throughout the nineteenth
century. A gentleman's full dress consisted,
much as it does today, of a very dark blue or
black tailcoat and trousers with satin striping on
the outseam, white waistcoat, stiff white shirt

3-15. Those present in the elegant

ballroom in this painting, Too Early,
by James Tissot (French, 18361902) wear the most stylish gowns
of 1873. The abundance of drapery
and ruffles mirrors the luxury and
elegance of the age.

89

3-16. In this portrait of Theodore

Duret by James Abbott McNeill
Whistler (American, 1834-1903),
the elegant juxtaposition of the
man's full evening dress with the
softness of the woman's evening
wrap that he carries reveals much
about the style of the Belle
Epoque.

front, and white tie or cravat. The "top hat,

white tie, and tails" of Fred Astaire had its origins in Beau Brummell's fastidious linen and his
tasteful rejection of the brocaded silks of the
earlier epoch in favor of well-tailored serviceable
wool broadcloth. The gentlemen in James
Tissot's painting Too Early and in James Abbott
McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Flesh Color
and Black are examples of this familiar style (figs.
15, 16). In European courts, civil uniforms often
provided a more gala alternative for gentlemen's
dress. In the Viennese court ball in figure 18, the
men are in either military or civil uniform.
A number of delightful accessories have been
associated with dancing-glass hand-coolers
that kept the palms of a lady's hands from revealing the extent of the excitement she endured;
dance cards for recording the availability and
sequence of partners; bouquet holders of gold or
silver suspended from a ring; skirt-lifters, also on
a ring, used to manage a train discreetly; fans, so
necessary for delicate conversations and recovery from the rigors of the dance.
Over the centuries many of the fabrics chosen
for dancing dresses have been light and airy, and
so too have the colors, with pale pastels and
white predominant through most of the nineteenth century. The dramatic quality of the
black gown in John Singer Sargent's Madame X
(fig. 19) derives in large measure from its colorone that has come to dominate the twentieth
century and to represent a high degree of sophistication.
The Belle Epoque, noted for its lavish evening parties and elegant society, expended equal
energy on sumptuous evening clothes. The
hoops of the 1850s and 1860s became the bustles
of the 1870s and 1880s and remained as vestigial
pads to round out the hourglass figures of the
1890s. Seen in the paintings by Tissot (see fig.
90

3-17. Among the numerous charming accessories that could be found

at the great occasions of the past are
those pictured here (from /eft): silk
shawl, posy holder, organdy boa,
Chantilly lace fan, kid gloves, ivory
and silk fan, evening slippers,
Brussels lace handkerchief, and
twocarnetsdebalby Faberge.

15) and Gause (fig. 18), the ruffles and ribbons

and festooned ornament decorate the ball gowns
as exuberantly as social figures decorated their
homes.
The arrival in Paris in 1907 of the Ballets
Russes crystallized the need for dramatic change
in styles and provided a foundation for new
attitudes toward design. In fashion this was par-

ticularly important in the work of Paul Poiret,

who claimed to have freed women from the
corset but in fact bound them again, this time at
the ankles, with the hobble skirt. The silhouette
was remarkably straight by 1915, as demonstrated by the Worth sketch (fig. 23 ). The
sequined net used as an overskirt would float
and sparkle as the dancer moved in the new

3-18. Above: As seen in Ball at Court,

a gouache by Wilhelm Gause (German, 1853-1916?), one of the most
striking aspects of the dress at a
Viennese gala ball was the variety
of civil uniforms from the vast
reaches of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.

91

3-19. The elegance ofMme Pierre

Gautreau in the famous portrait by
John Singer Sargent known as
Madame X is enhanced by the
sophisticated cut and rich black
color of her gown. This attitude
toward well-cut black dresses
has been of great importance in
twentieth-century couture.
3-20. Opposite: The dresses for a ba/
blanc around 1900 had to represent
the youth, innocence, and beauty
of the young girl's first venture into
society. In this charming watercolor
Pierre Vidal uses the swirling
skirts of the dancers to capture
the rhythm and grace of their
movement.

'To keep herfigure she's now obliged to force il

Not to the mould ofCanova but a corset."
-Robert de Montesquiou,
on Mme Gautreau

92

94

dances with Latin rhythms that were gaining

popularity. The flat slippers of the early nineteenth century had gradually acquired heels
until by the early twentieth century they were
over two inches high with a "Louis" curve. They
retained at least that height until the 1960s.
In addition to the Ballets Russes, interest in
japan also inspired an exotic orientalism. In an
evening-coat design, Mme Paquin captured the
kimono like cocoon shape that allowed luxurious
drapery and decoration while maintaining a very
narrow silhouette (figs. 21, 22). Evening wraps
were created with just as much attention to the
special nature of the occasion as were the ball
gowns themselves. Often trimmed with rich furs
and made of heavy patterned silks, these garments were far more than elegant harbingers of
gowns to be revealed when ladies entered the
ballroom.
The quintessential flavor of the jazz age is to
be found in a 1925 illustration from Harper's
Bazar (fig. 24). Urbane sophistication reigns in
the posture of the dancers as well as in the
silhouettes of the dresses but then finds itself
juxtaposed with the frivolity of fantastic drapery
and ornamentation. Dresses in the twenties permitted the Charleston and black bottom to be
danced with abandon because the dresses themselves had abandoned the structure of previous
periods. Hanging straight from shoulder to
knee, caught only at the hip for emphasis, these
dresses had none of the corsetry that inhibited
motion. Only the sheer weight of fabric completely covered with glass beads could affect the
movement, not to mention the endurance, of
the dancer. The vast majority of evening dresses
were sleeveless, so arms were freed as well.
By the twenties, brighter colors, whi<:h had
begun to appear at the end of the nineteenth
century and had been given added impetus by
the Ballets Russes, found wide acceptance,
along with black. Coco Chanel's "little black
dress" made itself as indispensable on the dance
floor as it was in town for day wear; in the
evening version the neckline plunged deeper,
the sleeves disappeared, the ornament increased
and fluttered more. The dress in figure 26, photographed by Cecil Beaton, is covered with narrow pieces of silk georgette, each sewn with a
line of sequins and attached at one end to the
dress to create a fringe. Imagine the enhanced
effect of the movement with both wearer and
sequins dancing. On other dresses, other decorative elements-feathers, beads, silk fringe,
floating panels, scarves, scalloped and dagged

3-21, 22. The photograph opposite

and the plate abof.Je show the
actual Paquin coat in the Costume
Institute collection and the illustration published to advertise it in
1912. The spirit of the moment is
caught by both the style of the
illustration and the dramatic
qualities of the costume itself.
3-23. Left: It is of special interest to note the fabric swatches
attached to this 1915 sketch from
the House of Worth. The buyer
could choose the color that most
suited her when she ordered
the dress.

95

3-24. Rig/It: This scene reveals not

only the haute couture of Coco
Chanel, kfl, and Paquin, rig/It, but
also the demeanor fashionable in
1925-so different from attitudes
of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

3-25.J.4t: The daring of the 1920s

is evident in the low neckline and
sleeveless style of this short Worth
evening dress-evening attire
that for the first time bares the
lower leg.
3-26. Opposite: This flapper dress
of 1926, photographed by Cecil
Beaton, was the inspiration for a
minidress designed in the 1960s by
Norman Norell.

96

3-27. Throughout the 1930s the

silhouette was elongated and
slender, with the draping qualities
of the fabrics enhancing the line, as
in these Jean Patou dresses.

98

hems-all added their own motion to that of the

dancer.
The 1930s understood movement in a different way, and the dresses designed by Madeleine Vionnet represent the most imaginative
interpretation of this change (fig. 28). Emphasizing the contours of the body itself, these dresses
gave the appearance of gliding over the body
with no structure at all. Instead, they are consummate examples of a cut so sophisticated that
the inherent structure of the textile alone gives
shape to the dress. By manipulating the degree
to which the bias, or diagonal of the fabric,
draped vertically on the body, Vionnet created
dresses that moved as one with die wearer. Frequently made of silk crepe or charmeuse or
metallic lame, these dresses had long sinuous
lines of great sensuality. Such fabrics have a
reflecting quality, and the play of light and
shadow gave added emphasis to the contours of
the body in motion.
The exuberance of Christian Dior's "New
Look" collection in the spring of 1947 was a return in the cycle of fashion to a silhouette more
dependent on shapes imposed on the body by
molded bodices, cinched waists, exaggerated
hips, and longer skirts. The New Look for evening included some of the most remarkable ball
gowns ever created. Strapless bodices brought
the neckline lower than ever but required boning that was reminiscent of the corsetry of previous epochs and had a similar effect on the
posture of the wearer. Extraordinarily bouffant
skirts, such as those in figure 32 and on page 102,
brought graceful, swirling movement to the
dance floor. Supported by multiple layers of stiff,
light crinolines with occasional hoop~, these
skirts took as much space in the ballroom as their
predecessors a century before.
Ball gowns designed by Charles James featured distinctive, structured satin drapery (fig.
33). The outer fabrics of the James dresses were
draped over an elaborately constructed shape
and, although very heavy, were built in such a
way that the weight was balanced, therefore
more comfortable for the wearer. The structure
of the dresses did control movement, however,
through volume as well as boning. Throughout
the 1950s, under the fashion leadership ofBalenciaga, the silhouette for evening varied from
wide to narrow, with an ever more sculptural
attitude toward the silhouette. Ball gowns did
not always sweep the floor in the fifties; some
were cut to ballerina length-just below the
calf-or street length-a few inches below the

3-28. Above: The drapery of

Madeleine Vionnet's bias gowns
over a woman's body gave a classical
quality to many of her fashions, as
is emphasized in this 1931 example,
named "Sonia" by the designer.

3-29.Left: One of the most influential twentieth-century designers,

Coco Chanel, models one of her
1937 creations in her own inimitable style.

99

3-31. Left: This fashion photograph

by Man Ray (French, 1890-1976),
while featuring a Lucien Lelong
dress, reveals the bored sophistication of the late 1930s as well as a
taste for shocking juxtapositions.
3-30. Opposite: Until the war years
brought about sumptuary laws and
other shortages, American designers created luxurious evening fashions such as these lace dresses by
Milgram and Hattie Carnegie, photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe in
1941. The ultrasophistication of the
1930s gave way to a more naive
quality in the 1940s.

3-32. Right: These dresses, named

"Venus" and "juno" by their
designer, Christian Dior, epitomized the return of luxury after
World War II.

101

knee. In the sixties, this trend went even further, encompassing the extremes of the miniskirt and hot pants.
Perhaps no single word better evokes the
1960s than "variety." Dramatic change occurred
in popular dance music: rock and roll entered
the ballroom, bringing with it the twist and other
dances and a range of clothing, from minidresses
made of plastic discs by Paco Rabanne to elegant
full-length sequined "mermaid" dresses by Norman Norell (fig. 35). Designers created as much
variety in structure as in shape. For example, the
sequins on the Norell are individually sewn to a
fine silk jersey, allowing stretch with the motion
of the body, and the Paco Rabanne, linked with
metal rings, was flexible at every join. On the
other hand, heavily constructed minidresses
such as those by Courreges, with linings and
interlinings, left the legs and arms free but maintained rigidly geometric lines.

102

Accessories in the twentieth-century's middle

decades became fewer-gone were hand-coolers, dance cards, bouquet holders, skirt-lifters,
and fans. The single most important accessory
became the evening bag of metal, mesh, or
beaded and jeweled fabric. Evening shoes of
fabric matched the dress or were sculpted and
jeweled, like- the Roger Vivier shoe for Dior on
page 8. Evening boots, also often jeweled, were
worn with minidresses.
Until the late 1960s, the element of fantasy,
ever present in the design of costumes for social
dancing, was given its greatest expression in
clothes worn especially for masquerade balls.
This "fancy dress" apparel, no matter what the
century, retained the basic fashionable silhouette of the time and imposed the fantasy on
it. For example, in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, a very popular fantasy was a "Marie
Antoinette" or "shepherdess'' costume based on

3-33. Heavy satin drapery gives a

very sculptural look to these post~ar Charles James dresses photographed by Cecil Beaton.
3-34. From the inception of her
long career, Mme Gres has used
soft silk jersey to achieve gowns
of classical grace and sculptural
quality, here augmented by the
stiffened silk overdress. This 1950
photograph of the model Dovima
was made by Richard Avedon.

103

"Drt!SS clothes are the true uniform ofdemocracy; they put a limit
on the gorgeousness ofpeacock wealth. Drt!SS clothes are a social
commandment: ~o gay shalt thou be and no gayerf "
-Sartorial Art journal, April/904

the actual fashion worn by the queen in the late

eighteenth cenrury. However, a shepherdess in
the 1880s had a busde rather than a pannier,
while in the 1920s the shepherdess might have
low side hoops reflecting designer j eanne Lanvin's popular robe de style, which had an elliptical
skirt shape . The s leeveless bodice and low
waisdine still retained the unmistakable twenties look. The illustration from Art, Gout, Beaut/
is an excellent example of fantasies unrelated to
actual clothing but still with the silhouette ofthe
period (fig. 36).
No matter what the century, people have
found great pleasure in dancing and in dressing
to suit the occasion. The grandest flights of
fancy and the greatest elegance and sophistication have been applied w ball gowns and their
accessories. T he most obvious statements of
femininity in fashion are w be found in these
dresses, which also reflect the woman's image of
herself and her pursuit of social relationships.
With fantasy comes romance.

3-35. lLft: T his dress by Norman

Norell moved with the music of the
1960s and captured the spirit of the
time with great e legance.

104

3-36. Below: There can be no

greater flight of fancy than the creation of costumes for a masquerade
ball-all the while retaining fashion, style, and in this case the spirit
of the 1920s. These costumes were
made to represent seven different
stations of the Paris Metro.

''Crowded tables and a more crowdedfloor; sleek heads and swaying shoulders; sparklingflash ofjewels, real andfalse; the scent of
powders, perfumes, and dust! . .. College boys and college girls;
prosperous men and their prosperous-looking wives; old men and
pretty girls; old women andpretty boys; duty dancing, pleasure
dancing, bad dancing, good dancing . .. all this is Florida, in
Paris, at one o'clock in the morning."
--Vogue,llury/927

IJ

3-3 7. This illustration is from La

Gazette de Bon Ton, 1921.

105

106

The Iconography ofDance

by Laurence Libin and Constance Old

4-1. Opposite above: The carving on
the lid ofthis fifteenth-century
Italian marriage chest, or cassone,
shows ladies dancing on the occasion of a knight's coronation.
4-2. Opposite be/ow: The subject of
this sixteenth-century plaque,
carved by johannes Dauer (German, 1485-1538), is an allegory of
virtues and vices, but it could be a
literal description of a scene at the
court of Charles V, where dancing,
like hawking, hunting, and jousting, was considered a suitable
courtly pastime.

Few activities bring social history more fully to

life than old dances; they capture the mood of an
earlier age, its music, fashions, and manners. In
recent years, growing public appreciation of our
cultural heritage has awakened interest in recreating the dances of days gone by. More than
just an amusing pastime, this revival involves
both serious scholarship and commercial enterprise. Its concern ranges from the preservation of
regional folk dances, some nearly extinct in their
native locales, to the re-creation of court ballet,
but it centers on reviving urban social dances
of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.
Responding to increasing specialization within
the past decade, dance camps and academic
workshops have begun to feature instruction
in such once-popular dances as Renaissance
pavanes and galliards and eighteenth-century
gavottes and minuets-the names alone evoke
myriad images derived, for many of us, from
paintings and book illustrations. Some educators
are promoting historical dancing as a participatory activity that offers intriguing insight and
experience.
Lavish dance entertainments conceived for
aristocratic enjoyment in European palaces are
now being staged professionally by rigorously
trained Renaissance and Baroque dance companies, which have proliferated hand-in-hand
with ensembles of period instruments. Their
impressive re-productions, which have recently
included grand opera-ballets of Jean-Philippe
Rameau (1683-1764), shed new light on the
social interactions and brilliant accomplishments of a vanished noble class. Ballroom
dances of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, closer in spirit to our own time, seem
destined for revival as we grow increasingly
nostalgic for a more gracious past, made familiar through theater, film, and television. If it is

true that interest in a period's music precedes

renewal of its dance, the recent rediscovery of
ragtime should soon spark enthusiasm for popular dance forms from the tum of the century.
Jitterbugging has already come around again,
thanks to the reemergence of syncopated swing.
The more academic "authenticity movement" aims to clear away anachronistic misconceptions of how and why early dances were
performed and to revitalize beautiful but longforgotten traditions. In close collaboration,
scholars, dancers, and musicians study old
treatises, music and dance notations, pictorial
and literary descriptions, and antique instruments and costumes in order to understand and
express the serious intent of dance masters as
distant in time as Domenico da Piacenza, whose
treatise De Atte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi dates
from around 1416. The social importance of
dance in Domenico's time is affirmed by the
carving on the lid of a fifteenth-century Italian
marriage coffer (fig. 1), which shows ladies dancing to instrumental accompaniment on either
side of a knight being crowned; the lid is inscribed Onessta na belladonna ("virtue in the
beautiful woman"). Like chivalry, dance reinforced medieval gender stereotypes.
Renaissance religious and political leaders as
well as pedagogues (among them many Italian
Jews, including Rabbi Jacob Levi, son-in-law of
the renowned Venetian musician Leon da Modena) considered social dancing a necessary
skill, not only because of its role in courtship and
entertainment but also because it helped instill
accepted codes of behavior. Political as well as
moral overtones occur in Johannes Dauer's exquisitely carved plaque, dated 1522, inscribed
Virtutem et viciorum adumbracio ("a sketch of
virtues and vices"), and representing the court of
Emperor Charles V (fig. 2). Here, in conjunction

107

4-3. This beautiful image of a

musical party is painted inside the
lid of a double virginal made in
Antwerp in 1581. Here dancing
takes its place among a number of
other outdoor summertime
activities.

108

with scenes of hawking, hunting, and jousting,

four mature couples in courtly garb dance
sedately to the music of flute and drum; refreshment awaits them in an open tent. Dance
appears in this allegorical context as a symbol of
the good life, properly regulated and rewarded.
Much the same message is conveyed by the
painted lid of a double virginal by Hans Ruckers
the Elder, made in Antwerp in 1581 (fig. 3). This
magnificent instrument, which bears the motto
Musica dulce laborum levamen ("Music, sweet
solace of labor") and portrait medallions of
Philip II of Spain and his queen, may have been
commissioned by the Spanish ruler. With evi-

court of Louis XIV. This monarch, himself

an avid dancer, created a royal dance academy
at the Louvre in 1661. Two decades later,
Menestrier was able to describe some fifty different ballets in his book Ballets anciens et modernes selon les regles du thiatre; by this time theatrical dance had begun to diverge from less
demanding amateur court dance. They still
shared basic steps, however, and both were often
performed to the music of Rameau's illustrious
predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687),
himself a successful dancer and courtier. Lully's
I.e Triomphe de fAmour, produced the year before
Menestrier's book was published, saw the first

dent approval, the unknown artist places dance

in the context of outdoor summertime pleasures-sports and games, boating, feasting, visiting a zoo on the grounds of a chateau-all, like
music, the compensation of aristocratic labor.
The scholar and vicar-general of Langres in
eastern France, Jehan Tabourot (better known
by his anagram Thoinot Arbeau ), whose dance
manual Orchesographie (1589) takes the form of
a didactic dialogue with his imaginary student
Capriol ("Caper"), justified dance by citing the
Bible: "a time to mourn and a time to dance"
(Ecclesiastes 3:4). A continuing esteem for social dance among the ruling class is reflected
in the writings of the Jesuit Claude-Fram;ois
Menestrier, who organized festivities at the

appearance of female professional dancers on

the French stage.
The documentary sources through which
dance history can be explored are numerous.
Early choreographic notation systems, such as
the one published by Raoul-Auger Feuillet in
his Chortgraphie (Paris, 1700), map out hundreds
of dances. Scores of informative engravings
of dancers appear in books like Gregorio
Lambranzi's Nuova e curiosa scuola de'balli theatrali (Nuremberg, 1716). Original sketches for
dancers' costumes, such as Louis-Rene Boquet's
drawing of Mile Chevalier "en grand costume de
danse pour le ballet du Roi;' provide essential
details (fig. 4 ). Chevalier, a mid-eighteenth-century opera singer and actress, was, like others of

4-4. This sketch by Louis-Rene

Boquet (French, 1717-1814)
shows the important details of a
dancer's dress, in this case the grand
cos/Ume tk danse for the ballet of the
king worn by Mile Chevalier, an
opera singer, actress, and dancer of
the mid-eighteenth century.

4-5. Below: This nineteenthcentury French fan shows a circle

dance among other lively scenes of
merrymaking.

109

4-6. Rig/It: The spontaneity of

dance as a purely emotional expression is the subject of this drawing
by Edwin Austin Abbey (American, 1852-1911), who illustrated
Benjamin L. Farjean's novel A Castle
in Spain.

4-7. Below: Many figures in this

painting by Giovanni Domenico
Tiepolo (Italian, 1727-1804) are
those of actors of the Commedia
deii'Arte, a popular Italian entertainment improvised by stock
characters. The accuracy with
which the clothing is depicted
would enable any contemporary
designer to use it as a model for a
modem masquerade ball.

110

her profession, a trained dancer. The concealing

bulk of her skirt and her stiff bodice, which
enforced a perfectly erect posture, imply a concept of grace and motion quite foreign to modem practice; one wonders how she even managed to breathe.
Taking into account the vast number of unexplored sources, the historian Meredith Little has
pointed out four fertile areas for future investigation: fifteenth-century Burgundian and Italian
court dances; French branles and Italian balletti
of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; French court dances from about 1680 to
1725; and popular Baroque dances such as the
English country dance and French contredanse,
which were performed by all classes of society.
To these fairly remote styles we might add more
recent ballroom dances of the Romantic era,
amply documented in pictures and literature.
Certain other dances taught today to childrenfor example, the familiar, frisky circle dance
that figures in scenes of youthful partying on
a French nineteenth-century fan (fig. 5)-preserve vestiges of much older adult entertainments. As late as the sixteenth century, elderly
aristocrats gravely performed circle dances;
eventually, in Western Europe, such dances
became the property of young people and the
lower classes.
The scholarly and practical activity outlined
above, part of a healthy retrospective trend,
reacts against the stifling status quo too often
imposed by conservatism in the performing arts
and entertainment field. The search for inspiration in the past also rises from an urge to place
current popular dance fashions in context. Many
dancers have adopted a historically informed
approach in opposition to the notion that novelty
means superiority.
The "newer is better" conceit, which can
perhaps be understood in terms of theories of
biological evolution but which gives rise to
endless fads when applied unthinkingly to the
arts, would deprive us of the expressive techniques and interpretive freedom underlying the
richly varied styles of earlier dance, styles that
formerly delighted sophisticated participants
and that still have the power to thrill and move
us.
Paradoxically, nothing is fresher or more
startling in its originality than something "oldfashioned" revealed in the re-created perspective of its own time. The spark of genius appears
in every generation; in dance as in other arts, its
communicative power remains undiminished as

long as people remain receptive. Just as accretions of dirt, varnish, and overpainting can be
peeled off to reveal masterworks of painting in
their true, intended colors, so we can look
beyond the accustomed, even comfortable, but
often overworked surface of today's typical
dance events to restore the vivacity and spontaneity of old-time dance as evidenced in contemporary pictures and reviews.
Folk dance offers perhaps the most refreshing
tonic. Edwin Austin Abbey's drawing of a somewhat inebriated couple hoofing it outdoors at a
nighttime party (fig. 6) reminds us that dance
needs no elaborate preparation or musical
accompaniment but arises in purest form as a
spiritual expression, an outpouring of the psyche
from a depth untouched by fashion and sophistication.
Because the authenticity movement provides
challenging alternatives to the usual dance experience without necessarily denying the latter's
validity or broad appeal, it has a vitality no less
forceful than that of its counterpart the avantgarde, among whom we should include breakdancers alongside Merce Cunningham and
Twyla Tharp. Both historicism and futurism
yank our sensibilities away from the familiar.
Because the quest for historical authenticity can

4-8. Above: Although this painting

of about 1700 attributed to jeanAntoine Watteau has been titled
Peasant Dance, the dancing couple
are clearly not rustics. They appear
to be performing the same dance
as the one shown in Domenico
Tiepolo's painting.

111

never be fully satisfied, it leads in new directions; ever novel, like modem dance, it undermines complacent routine and compels constant
reevaluation.
The visual arts offer a wealth of information
concerning dance. Choreographers, costume
designers, theater and opera directors, and performers are turning increasingly often to art for
clues about dancing in different periods and
places. Dance iconography, as this study is
called, is emerging as a fertile field for research.
An artist's vision can help us understand dance
by illuminating details of characterization,
movement, staging, and style. Domenico
Tiepolo's painting A Dance in the Country is a
case in point (fig. 7). Obviously depicting not a
rustic folk dance but a Commedia deii'Arte
entertainment on the grounds of a mansion, this
painting could serve as a study for a stage set. To
the music of winds and strings, a young couple-the man costumed as Mezzetino, the
woman perhaps in the character of Columbina-dances alone, attracting only casual interest as other actors and guests converse and
mingle. The young woman's dress resembles
Mile Chevalier's, and the man wears flat, soft

dancing shoes. The characteristic mask and

headgear also provide perfect models for a
designer today, while other items, such as the
musical instruments, are much less realistic.
The dancers' positions, however, including such
details as the man's slightly raised left heel, demonstrate Tiepolo's acute observation of actual
dance.
Resembling Tiepolo's dancers though less
animated and less richly dressed, the dancing
couple in a painting attributed to Watteau are
clearly not peasants, despite the picture's modem title, Peasant Dance, and bucolic setting (fig.
8). Of significance to the modem choreographer
is the close relationship between this couple's
positions and the pose ofTiepolo's dancers; they
could be doing the same dance, possibly a minuet, caught on canvas in two steps only seconds
apart. By collecting and viewing sequentially
many such related representations, somewhat
in the manner of an animated cartoon, a dance
iconographer might tentatively reconstruct entire passages of steps.
Artists captured not only the mechanics of
dance but also the cultural attitudes and circumstances that have affected it. No clear class dis4-9. Left: David Teniers the Younger (Flemish, 1610-90), unlike
Watteau, pictures real peasants in
his Peasants Dancing and Feasting, but
only to point a judgmental finger at
the raucous behavior of the danc.ers, who represent the very opposite of proper, aristocratic conduct.
4-10. Opposite above: The simple

dancers pictured on the side of an

eighteenth-century Italian harpsichord may convey a wealth of allegorical overtones if one reads
symbolic meaning into the pose
of the central dancer and the
bagpipes.
4-11. Opposite!Jelow: Where Teniers
was more concerned with characterizing the peasant class than
depicting the dance accurately,
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
(Spanish, 1841-1920), in his 1909
painting Masquerade BaH at tile Ritz
Hotel, ltlris, employs a near-photographic realism that allows us to
study social behavior and costume
as well as a turn-of-the-century
form of touch dancing.

112

tinction appears in dances depicted before the

fifteenth century, but in the wake of the peasant
revolts of that time, artists became more critical
of low-class conduct and began to reveal a differentiation and social hierarchy of dance styles.
Court dance held the highest status, followed by
civic and peasant dances (the term "folk dance"
arose only in the late eighteenth century).

According to the iconographer Walter Salmen,

the upper class henceforth claimed decency
exclusively for itself and regarded peasant dance
as foolish or merely instinctive.
The Flemish painter David Teniers recorded
aristocratic condescension in a moralizing painting now called Peasants Dancing (fig. 9), which
shows activities ranging from assault to public
113

4-13. Opposite: Unlike Schall,

Francis Picabia (French, 18781953) has produced, in No.I Bird
and 1Urt/e, a dreamlike dance image
that seems full of meaning but is
difficult to decipher without understanding Picabia's sources.

4-12. jean-Frederic Schall (French,

1752-1825), in his portrait of
Rosalie Gerard, provides us with an
accurate picture of the exquisite
costume worn by an eighteenthcentury Paris Opera dancer.

114

urination. In this unruly scene dance is another

symptom of dissipation. Three couples stamp
and fling to the raucous skid of a bagpipe; disheveled and sweating, they lack utterly the
grace and decorum of their betters, who inhabit
a chateau in the background. By contrary example, this painting teaches proper conduct; such
lascivious dancing is surely disreputable, a
mockery of correct, upper-class deportment.
Unfortunately for the historian of choreography, the attitude of Teniers's wealthy patrons
colored his vision; it is biased and unrealistic and
therefore not reliable as evidence of contemporary dance practice. One of many problems is
that no documentation exists from before the
nineteenth century to confirm the practice,
shown by Teniers, of peasants dancing as separate couples rather than as a single group in a row
or ring.
A contrasting though not necessarily objective viewpoint appears in Masquerade Ball at
the Ritz Hotel, Paris by Raimundo de Madrazo
y Garreta (fig. 11). Madrazo seems to update
Tiepolo's masquerade with almost photographic
accuracy-the painter depicts himself in profile,
far right, and his wife, seated at the neighboring
table with Emma T. Gary (who bequeathed the
picture to the Metropolitan Museum) and her
husband. A lavishly bedecked and carefree
crowd celebrates their elite status as two couples
twirl to the strains of a hidden band; another
couple is about to join them after a last sip of
wine. A bemused waiter, far left, notices a chair
overturned by the exuberant dancers. The foreground couple's close embrace, a normal dance
position since the mid-nineteenth century,
would have been considered indecent in the
original period of their costumes, when waltzing
created a scandal.
The lessons taught by such fixed images have
broad implications for sociology and anthropolo-

gy. For instance, students of choreometrics (the

examination of communication through dance
movements), lacking filmed records, must rely
partly on artistic representations to support such
controversial theses as Alan Lomax's, that
dances often reflect and reinforce movement
patterns that occur habitually in daily life, as.
during work and social intercourse. If this relationship between dance and mundane activity is
valid, the analysis of dance images may evoke
broad impressions of how a society operated in
the past.
As we learn from Teniers, the central question of whether or not a particular image faithfully depicts reality is crucial to interpreting
dance imagery. Seldom do artists (as opposed to
illustrators) content themselves with graphic
accuracy in representing people; more often
they depart from pure description for aesthetic
reasons or to express symbolic messages that
may have little to do with the intentions of their
depicted subjects. For example, an Italian
harpsichord of the early eighteenth century
bears on its side a painting of peasants dancing to
a bagpipe (fig. 10). Curiously, everyone but the
tall woman at center wears a tragic expression;
three dancers in a row left of center appear to be
blind. This picture does not convey the spirit of
a normal folk dance but instead follows the
emblematic tradition of chorea mundi, the "dance
of the world;' in which a beautiful woman representing worldly vanity and vice is encircled by
dancers seduced by her charms. As in Teniers's
painting, the bagpipe can symbolize both a
wineskin and a phallus, hence intoxication and
lust. Viewed analytically, many seemingly innocent dance images such as this one reveal erotic
undertones.
As the previous example shows, one must
distinguish meaningful from decorative images
and pictures of real dancers, which are rare, from

115

imaginary visions. Frederic Schall's revealing

portrait of Rosalie Gerard (1752-1820), known
as Mile Duthe, a Paris Opera dancer and mistress of the due d'Artois, is a good example of
realism in character, pose, and costume (fig. 12).
Gerard's midcalf dress style was introduced by
Marie Camargo, an earlier dancer at the Opera,
who created a sensation by revealing so much of
her legs; henceforth, female dancers had to wear
underdrawers. It is not always so easy to identify
realism because, confusingly, both dance and art
contain inconsistent elements of fantasy, unpredictability, and exoticism. What can be the
meaning of Francis Picabia's dreamlike painting
No. 1 Bird and Turtle (fig. 13)? Picabia, who
collaborated with Erik Satie on the Dada ballet
&tache (1924), incongruously placed his dancers
in a surreal landscape. The dancers' postures are
bizarre in their juxtaposition, while the nearly
naked woman's spotted body and ecstatic
expression-contrasting with her tuxedoed

partner's serious face-and the lightly delineated turtle and bird (which look like afterthoughts) suggest hidden messages. In fact, the
animals, landscape, and pigmentation of the
woman's body derive directly from old engravings reproduced in a 1925 medical journal to
illustrate an article on piebald Negroes.
Somewhat similar in atmosphere, a French
seventeenth-century tapestry (fig. 14), indebted
to a painting of Apollo and the Muses by Giulio
Romano, pictures classically garbed barefoot
men and women dancing in an overgrown
antique setting. A group of instruments by the
stream at lower left (partly rewoven) comprises
types associated with rustic revels: tambourine,
panpipe, triangle, cymbals, shawm. The vigorous dance is about to break off as the leading
youth calls attention to a peacock toward which
he runs. The meaning of this apparent allegory
is unclear.
Rich in symbolic and emotional content,
4-14.1.41: Another unclear allegory
is this scene on a seventeenthcentury French tapestry based on
a painting by Giulio Romano.
4-15. Opposite above: The photographic sequences of Eadweard
Muybridge (American, 1830-1904)
made it possible for the viewer to
analyze movement more accurately
than was possible from any single
image.
4-16. Oppositebeiow: In this brilliant
pencil sketch for his paintingE/
Jaleo, john Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925) is obviously more
interested in capturing the impression of a dancer's motion than in
depicting accurately her step, costume, or character. However, his
spontaneous style expressively conveys the tempo and mpod of the
dancer.

116

dance, like music, affects people mainly in a

nondiscursive manner by arousing feelings and
involuntary physical responses. Conveying the
dancer's affective, expressive (e )motion through
time and space in a static medium requires
pictorial solutions that may similarly appear to
defy or transcend physical reality. Freezing and
analyzing complex body motions, a problem
that especially fascinated Leonardo da Vinci,
largely eluded art and science until Eadweard
Muybridge applied photographic techniques to
it (fig. 15); earlier, the sequence and continuity
of movements in even so apparently simple an
activity as running could be described only partially, with no guarantee of precision. But photographs too can distort what the eye sees, because
human vision is informed by expectation and
remembrance while film is not. In interpreting
dance or indeed any motion, artists rely on visual
memory, which is incomplete and selective.
Inevitably, even works intended to be fully realistic can only approximate their subject.
When reconstructing a dance step from a
picture, one must take into account limitations
imposed by restrictive garments and awkward
footwear. Instruction books on deportment and
theatrical gesture supplement our knowledge of
appropriate stances and movement patterns.
Other clues come from literature, from choreographic notation, and from music-particularly
its articulation, tempo, and rhythm. Finally,
though fashions change rapidly, especially in
popular dance, traditional steps and patterns
span the centuries. The gestures of contemporary folk dances show how apparently similar
movements depicted in the past might have
been executed.
For most artists, though, even more important than documenting a dancer's motion is
creating a vivid impression, a sensation of activ-

117

4-17. Rif!/11: Pau l Troubetzko

(Russian, 1866- 1933 or 1938) ha
overcome the wei hry nature f
hi medium by po!iin his bronze
dam:cr at the point of lea ing the
ground.
4-1 . Below: Edgar Dcga
(French, I 3 - 1917), un like
lroube[zkoy, was mo re concerned
with revealing a "tou h ofugline. "
than with idealizing the beaury f
his dancer.

118

ity, as John Singer Sargent has done in a sketch

for El ]a/eo (fig. 16), a painting in the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Sargent's
rapid work aptly conveys the improvisatory style
of flamenco, though his model, Marie Renard,
was Parisian.
Indicating quick motion ordinarily involves
emphasizing such suggestive details as displacement of hair and garments and elevation off the
ground. The impression of elevation is particularly difficult to achieve in sculpture, which
must somewhere be rooted to a base. Paul Troubetzkoy's nimble Danseuse (fig. 17) delightfully
overcomes this problem; her extended fingers
and toes carry the viewer's eye outward, away
from the ground, while the energy of her kick
makes us anticipate further motion-we can
hardly leave her poised like this, a split second
before she leaves the ground. Edgar Degas's
study, cast in bronze after his death, is initially
less pleasing (fig. 18); his flat-footed model
appears to be exercising, not moving in any
particular direction. Unlike Troubetzkoy, Degas
does not idealize his subject, nor is his concern
simply for classic beauty; rather, his dancer
expresses what he called a more revealing "touch
of ugliness without which, no salvation!"
Knowledge of an artist's intent is not enough
to distinguish artistic "truth" from physical reality. We must also assess the artist's ability and
reliability. Did he actually witness what he portrays? Was he a participant, with a dancer's grasp
of balance and posture? Or is his work guided
only by impressions picked up secondhand, in
which case it is likely to be bland? Our own
kinesthetic experience tells us whether a
depicted pose is plausible or incongruous. It is
unnatural, for example, to move vigorously and
at the same time maintain an impassive face.
Pavel Petrovi tch Svinjin's Merrymaking at a Wayside Inn comes across almost as a caricature, so
sedate, nearly bored, are the dancing couples
(fig. 19); smoke from the foremost man's cigar
rises straight up as though he is standing still,
while the fiddler madly saws away and taps his
heel. It should be kept in mind that Svinjin, who
~as in his early twenties when he recorded his
impressions of American life while se.rving as
secretary to the Russian consul general in Philadelphia, was merely an amateur artist. The
sophisticated painter Fernando Botero, on the
other hand, deliberately exploits incongruity in
Dancing in Colombia (fig. 20). The discrepant
scale of Botero's dancers and musicians, and the
contrast between the dancers' thrusting energy

4-19.f4t: Pavel Petrovitch Svinjin

(Russian, 1787-1839) was an amateur artist who recorded his impressions of America during a trip made
in his early twenties. His fiddler is
animated, but the dancers are
oddly static.

4-20. Below: Fernando Botero

(Colombian, born 1932) exploits
incongruity in his Dancing in Colombia to create a convincing view of a
sleazy dance hall.

119

4-22. Opposite above: The figures on

this piece of eighteenth-century
printed cotton are clearly young
sailors dancing "Ia danse
savoyarde," as we can tell from
their costume and pose.

4-21. Below: Elie Nadelman (American, 1885-1946) was fascinated by

American popular culture. His ink
drawing Dancing Couple is lively, but
one cannot tell exactly what dance
step is being performed.

4-23. Opposite below: The cakewalk

is easily identifiable in this wonderfully specific print of about 1907 by
George Luks (American, 18671933).

and the bulky band's fatigued stares, are completely unnatural, but the picture convincingly
conveys the thick midnight atmosphere of a
sleazy dance hall.
just as a single word from a poem or a chord
out of a musical score may not suffice to identify
the work (unless it is familiar and unique, like
Lewis Carroll's word "jabberwock" or Wagner's
Tristan chord), so a single image-photograph or
artist's representation-of people dancing will
usually fail to identify the dance being performed. This is especially likely for popular
dances, which hold many postures in common.
While a pictured step may be graceful, interesting, and stylistically typical, the arrested motion
often lacks enough specificity for a viewer to
recognize its context; this is true, for example, of
Elie Nadelman's DancingCouple(fig. 21), a product of the Polish-born artist's fascination with
American popular culture. Identification is simpler when a dance includes some peculiar pose
or prop. A man shown with knees deeply bent,
leaning far back as he passes beneath a low bar,
can only be doing the West Indian limbo; sailors
holding their arms at their sides while leaping to
a pipe and drum are most probably dancing a jig
or hornpipe (fig. 22); the exaggerated strut of a
cakewalk (fig. 23) is hard to mistake. But exceptions like these are rare in conventional social
dance.
Unlike traditional dances that involve special
equipment (as many sports do) and ballets that
tell their story largely through distinctive staging, most popular social dancing at any moment
gives few visual indications that would allow
someone seeing only a photograph, say, to name
the dance with certainty. Such anonymity occurs
because popular dancing normally has a limited
vocabulary of movements and gestures; in other
words, like pop music with its repetitive, usually
120

121

4-24. In the early eighteenth century the five basic ballet positions
were first illustrated in Maim
danser by Pierre Rameau. Two centuries later ballet, epitomized by
the dancing on pointe and the fully
turned out feet seen in Degas's
Reltearsal ofthe Ballet on the Stage, had
become a highly refined, professionally performed development of
the original aristocratic dance.

122

123

4-25. J.4t: This pair of Baroque

dancers modeled by johann
Friedrich Liicke (German, active
eighteenth century) represents the
dancer Mile Salle and a male partner wearing a kmnelet skirt.
4-26. Opposite: The placement of
hands on hips and the festive
costume indicate that the man
depicted in this German bronze
sculpture of about 1550 is dancing
rather than running.

predictable, chord changes and rhythms, it is

highly redundant. Redundancy in dance is both
a constraint and a virtue. By having few and
simple steps, as a basic box waltz does, popular
dance allows full participation even among people with minimal training; partners are free to
enjoy one another without having to concentrate
on their own motions. It is this deliberate
simplicity that keeps a dance down to earth, so
to speak, and makes it truly popular.
As dance patterns become more complex and
difficult, excluding general participation and
eventually requiring professional training, elitism results, and, if the dance is sufficiently
enduring and serious in intent, a classical style
emerges. We can speak of classicism even in
regard to popular dance. Certainly the breathtakingly imaginative, exhilarating, and romantic
performances of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
lay far beyond the capabilities of average ballroom dancers. These virtuosi raised popular
dance to an artistic level thai their fans could
hardly hope to achieve, just as great jazz
improvisers elevated simple chord patterns like
the blues progression into a cerebral, elite form.
It is not difficult to see in the five elementary
positions of classical ballet a redundancy that
recalls ballet's origin as a popular form, albeit
an upper-class one. These positions were not
nearly so extreme in the Baroque era, when
completely turned-out feet and dancing on
124

pointe, as shown by Degas (fig. 24), were unknown. The five basic ballet positions were first
illustrated in u Maitre adanser (1725) by Pierre
Rameau, French dance master to the queen of
Spain. According to the dance historian Wendy
Hilton, French danses adeux of the seventeenth
century were constructed from a basic vocabulary of only about twenty steps, most of which
could be incorporated into any dance whether
in double or triple meter. The motions
making up the step-units were even fewer:
walking (pas marche), knee bends (plies), rising
from the plie (eleve), small jumps (sautes), slides
(glisses ), and turns on the balls of the feet (tournes). Each of these motions could be ornamented, and hand and arm gestures were
employed along with inflections of the head.
These expressive embellishments animate a
pair of Baroque dancers (fig. 25) modeled by j. E
Liicke. Performed quickly or slowly in different
rhythms, these standardized motions could be
combined almost infinitely. At any moment,
however, the eye perceives only one pose, and
this is the artist's problem.
From the artist's viewpoint of frozen motion,
a waltz (derived from the ancient volta) may be
hard to distinguish from a fox-trot, or a conga
from a bunny hop; they employ much the same
body language, and distinguishing motions are
seldom visible on the instant. If an artist wants to
depict an immediately recognizable dance, he

must show a unique, characteristic moment.

Often, the more idiosyncratic, athletic, or intri..:
cate a dance becomes, the more readily it can be
characterized by a single pose-the can-can's
high kick, for example, or the Charleston's
crossed hands on knees. At the opposite extreme, a very simple dance motion can be indistinguishable from another activity such as
running or jumping; thus we may not know from
an image whether the subject is dancing at all.
Only the placement of hands on hips suggests
that a man in festival costume from about1550 is
dancing rather than running (fig. 26).
In all temporally extended arts, a dynamic
sequence of events-words, notes, stepsrather than any single unit individualizes the
work, carries its plot, so to speak. Thus we refer
to "passages" and "pacing" in dance, music,
drama, and literature, implying movement onward in time. These terms apply only loosely to
static or synchronous arts, and then more properly in regard to creative processes than to elements of the finished work. Only an illusion of
rare artistry can save the fixed pose, deprived of
its generative force and resolution, from being
lifeless. The viewer must be allowed to supply
the pose's origin and destination in his imagination by drawing on memory of actual experience. For example, experience tells that a
dancer shown in midair must have sprung from
the ground near a certain place and will descend
somewhere in the direction of forward motion;
where we think this will be depends on our
impression of velocity. The frozen image thus
acts on our remembrance of similar events that
we have witnessed or very likely experienced
only during childhood play. Without this background, we would fail to respond appropriately,
and the dance image would be inexplicable or
lacking in intensity.
While no image can fully convey the kinetic
feeling of doing or watching a dance, pictures
and other immobile, timeless representations
can nevertheless reveal much about the nature
of dancing and, when identifiable, about particular dances, especially about their style. As portrayed in painting and sculpture, a dancer's
costume, position, gesture, facial expression,
surroundings, and apparent interaction with
other people all contribute visual evidence that
is invaluable to the historian and modem interpreter. They also provide the casual viewer with
an opportunity for tightly focused attention and
sustained contemplation, which live performance seldom affords ..
125

Picture Credits
Frontispiea. Cecil Beaton: /rme Castle
Photograph, n.d.
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Page 8. Richard Avedon: Evening slipper by Roger
VIVierfor Dior
Photograph, 1963
Copyright 1963 by Richard Avedon Inc.
All rights reserved.
1-1. Charles-Nicolas Cochin: Yew Tree Ball
Engraving, c. 1745
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1930
(30.22)
1-2. "Costume de Paul Poiret dans le gout Louis XIV"
from La Gazette de Bon Ton, 1912
Thomas J. Watson Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
1-3. Vue perspective de Ia salle du bat, construite dans Ia cour
de f Hotel de Ville
Engraving, 17~1760
1-4. Matthew Darly: A Scotc/J Reel
Engraving, 1776
Dance Collection, The New York Public Libmry
1-5. Tile Windror Ball
Engraving, c. 1778
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
1-6. Moreau le Jeune: Le Bat Masqui
Engraving, 1782
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
(Roger-Viollet photo)
1-7. "Domino" fromGaleriedesMod&r, 1783
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropoli~n.Museum of An
1-8. Thomas Rowlandson: Tile Comforts ofBath:
Tile Ball
Pen and ink and watercolor, c. 1798
Yale Center for British An, Paul Mellon Collection,
New Haven, Connecticut
1-9. Social ball invitation, 1813
The New-York Historical Society
1-10. Untitled lithograph, c. 1815
The Bettmann Archive
1-11. Sketc/J ofa Ball at A/mack's, 1815
BBC Hulton Picture Libmry, The Bettmann Archive
1-12. Newport Pagnell. Mrs. Hurst Dancing, 1816
Copyright Neville Ollerenshaw, 1981
From Diana Sperling: Mrs. Hurst Dancing and Otller
Scenes from Regency Lifo (London: Victor Gollancz;
New York: St. Martin's Press)

1-19. julius L. Stewan: Tile Hunt Ball

Oil on canvas, 1885
The Essex Club, Newark, New Jersey

Courtesy of The New York Infirmary Beekman Downtown Hospital

1-20. julius L. Stewan: Key to "Tile Hunt Balf'

Watercolor on paper, 1885
The Essex Club, Newark, New Jersey

1-41. Cecil Beaton: Daisy Fellows at the Beistigui Ball

(detail)
Photograph, 1951
Courtesy of Sotheby's, London

1-21. Lady Randolph Churchill, c. 1886

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

1-42. "Valerian Rybar as a Devil at the de Cuevas Ball"

from Point de Vue, 1953
Collection of Valerian Rybar

1-22. "The Centennial Ball in the Metropolitan Opem

House" from Harper's Weekly, 1889
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

1-43. Mona, Countess Bismarck, 1955

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

1-23. Paul Nadar: Costume Ball oftlte Princesse de Lion

Photograph, c. 1890
Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des
Sites

Martin Engelbrecht: Das Tanzen

Engmving, c. 1730
Dance Collection, The New York Public Libmry

1-24. joseph-Marius Avy: Bat Blanc

Oil on canvas, 1903
Musee du Petit Palais, Paris
(Bulloz photo)
1-25. A Boston debutante, 1894
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
1-26. Mrs. Anhur Paget as Cleopatm, 1897
Reproduced by permission of the Chatswonh Settlement Trustees
1-27. Paul Nadar: Countess Elisabetlz Grefju/1/e in a llilrth
dress
Photograph, c. 1900
Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des
Sites
1-28. "Tmvestis dans le pare" from La Gazette de Bon
Ton, 1913
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
1-29. J. C. Leyendecker: Dancing Couple
Advertisement, 1913
Courtesy of The Arrow Company
1-30. Irene Castle wearing a dancing dress by Lucille,
1914-24
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Gift oflrene Castle, 1947 (47.57.6)
1-31. ~Dinner-dance" from Art, Gout, Beauti, 1929
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
1-32. Cecil Beaton: Margot Asquith, Lady Oxford
Photograph, 1927
Counesy of Sotheby's, London
1-33. Three illustmtions from Eve, 1922
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

Page 52 (counterclochoisefrom top):

Thomas Rowlandson: Tile Comforts of Batlt: Private

Practices Previous to tlte Ball
Engraving, c. 1798
Yale Center for British An, Paul Mellon Collection
After Emil Adam: Tile Dancing Lesson
Engraving, c. 1880
Jacques-Philippe Lebas: Tile Dancing LeSson
Engraving, late 18th century
Page 53 (from top):
George Hunt: Mr. Owlen's Institution, New Lanark
Aquatint, 1825
Dance Collection, The New York Public Libmry
George Cruikshank: Tile Dancing Lesson
Etching, 1835
Dance Collection, The New York Public Libmry
Illustmtion from La Gazette de Bon Genre, 1920
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Page 54 (from top):
Alfred Stevens: Winter
Oil on canvas, c. 1875
Sterling and Francine Clark An Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Dior Ball Gown
Photography, 1950
Courtesy of Louise Dahl-Wolfe
"Les Prepamtifs du Bal" from LeBon Genre, 1801
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Page 55 (/rom top):
After Paul Gavami: Les Apprits du Bal
Engmving, 1834
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Bequest of Howard Caner, 1939 (49. 74.141)

1-13. George Cruikshank: Tom, Jerry and Logic making

the most ofan Evening at Vauxllall
Engraving, 1821
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The .Metropolitan Museum of An

1-34. Howard Thain: Palais d'Or, New lOrk City

Oil on canvas, 1928
The New-York Historical Society

1-14. "Gmnd Ball given by the citizens of New York to

the Prince of Wales" from Harper's Weekly, 1860
The New-York Historical Society

1-36. Illustmtion from La Gazette de Bon Genre, 1921

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

Hans Lefler: Tile Allegory Dance

Engraving, 1902
The Newark Public Libmry, Newark, New Jersey

1-15. Jean Bemud: La Soirle

Oil on canvas, c. 1880
Musee Camavalet, Paris
(An Resource/Gimudon photo)

1-37. Horst: Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent

Photograph, 1934
Courtesy of Horst

Illustmtion from Fas/Jions ofLondon, 1798

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Libmry
The Metropolitan Museum of An

1-35. Mrs. Blaine Mallon and Mr. Paul Wmngel, 1931

The Bettmann Archive

1-16. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt as "Electric Light,"

1883
The New-York Historical Society

1-38. Cecil Beaton: Loelia Ponsonby, Duchess of

Westminster
Photograph, 1931
Courtesy of Sotheby's, London

1-17. "Vanderbilt Fancy Dress Ball" from Frank Leslie's

lllustrattdWeekly, 1883
The New-York Historical Society

1-39. Cecil Beaton: Wallis Simpson, Duchess ofWindror

Photograph, 1937
Courtesy of Sotheby's, London

1-18. Pierre-Auguste Renoir: La Danse aIa Ville

Oil on canvas, 1882-83
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

1-40. Debutantes at the New York Debutante Cotillion

and Christmas Ball, 1948

126

Richard Avedon: Dorian Leigh

Photograph, 1949
Photograph copyright 1949 by Richard Avedon Inc.
All rights reserved
Page 56 (/rom top):

Page 57 (/rom top):

Jean-Leon Gerome: Duel After the Masquerade
Oil on canvas, after 1857
Walters An Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland
Alfred Stevens: After tlte Ball
Oil on canvas, 1874
The Metropolitan Museum of An
Gift of the Estate of Marie L. Russell, 1946 (46.150.1)
2-1. "Dancers" from Chronitjue d'Angleterre

Miniature painting, 15th century

Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung,
Vienna
2-2. Stratonice Master: Antioc!Jus and Stratonice (detail)
Panel from a cassone, 15th century
The Huntington Library
San Marino, California
2-3. French School: I.e Bal du Due de Joyeuse
Oil on canvas, c. 1581
Musee du Louvre, Paris
(Art Resource/Giraudon photo)
2-4. Unknown artist: Queen Elizabeth Doing Lavolta witll
tile Earl ofLeicester
Woodcut after a painting in Penshurst Palace, late 16th
century
2-5. After Michel-Vincent Brandoin: Tile Allemande
Engraving, c. 1750-80
2-6. "Bat aIa Fram;aise" from Almanacll Royalpour
fAnnit MDCLXXXII, 1685
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
2-7. Jean-Antoine Watteau: Les Plaisirs de Bal
Oil on canvas, 1717
By permission of the Governors of Dulwich Picture
Gallery
(Jeremy Marks photo)

2-23. Pierre Vidal: "Dancing Over the Rooftops of

Paris" from La Vie de Montmartre, 1899
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1954
(54.658.12)
2-24. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Quadrille at tile

Moulin Rouge
Gouache on cardboard, 1892
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale
Collection
2-25. The turkey trot, c. 1912
The Bettmann Archive
2-26. "Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Casde's New Dances for
This Winter" from Tile Ladies Home Journal, 1913
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2-27. Four girls doing the Charleston in a London stage
review, c. 1923
The Bettmann Archive
2-28. Tango del amor, 1927
The Bettmann Archive
2-29. Dance sequence from Top Hat (1935)
The Museum of Modern Art, Film Stills Archive

2-8. Beauchamps-Feuillet notation system from Tile Aft

of Dancing a Minuet, 1735, by Kellom Tomlinson

2-30. Lou Barlow: Jitterbuf!}

Wood engraving, 1930s
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stewart S.
MacDermott Fund, 1983 (1983.1147)

2-9. Fan, late 18th century

Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

2-31. The twist at the Peppermint Lounge, 1961

The Bettmann Archive

2-10. "La Walse" from I.e Bon Genre, 1801

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2-11. "La Trenis, Contredanse" from I.e Bon Genre, 1805
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2-12. "La Sauteuse" from I.e Bon Genre, 1806
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2-13. Dottatoret linea/or Loquitur
Engraving, 1817
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1942 (42. 74.2 [17])
2-14. L'Eti
Engraving, 1820-29
Dance Collection, The New York Public Library
2-15. L'Ang/aise
Engraving, 1820-29
Dance Collection, The New York Public Library

2-32. Jitterbug dancers, 1940s

The Bettmann Archive
2-33. Joseph Sheppard: Rock and Roll
Oil on canvas, 1970
Collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art,
Tucson; Gift of the Artist
3-1. A. de Saine-Aubin: I.e Bal Etzri
Engraving, 1770s
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane
Dick Fund, 1933 (33.56.33)
3-2. Dama francese in alto di Bal/are
Engraving, 17th century
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
3-3. Shoes
White kid, 17th century
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers Fund, 1906
(06.1344)

2-16. Viennese dance hall, late 19th century

The Bettmann Archive

3-4. "The Dancing Lesson" from Go/erie des Modes,

1780
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

2-17. A. Belloquet: "Mabile-La Moment des Confidences'' from Dancing in Etzris, 1860-69
Dance Collection, The New York Public Library

3-5. "Habit de Bat" from Go/erie des Modes, 1779

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

2-18. Paul Gavami: La Galope

Engraving, c. 1830
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1952
(52.600.5)

3-6. Dress
French, c. 1775-1800
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Irene
Lewisohn Bequest, 1961 (CI 61.13.lab)
(Sheldan Comfert Collins photo)

2-19. Schulz: Bal Valentino

Engraving, late 19th century
Dance Collection, The New York Public Library

3-7. "Tunique de Bat" from Costume Etzrisien, 1802

Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

2-20. Feuillet and Desaix choreographic notations, 1713

3-8. Ball Dress

Hand-colored engraving, 1823
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1942
(42. 74.2[29])

2-21. Mr. Jullien: I.e Bon Mlnage. Contre-Danse Frat1faise

L'Airet Ia Figure.
Engraving, n.d.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The EJ:
~ittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1955
(55.563.6)
2-22. "The Basic Step of the Rumba" from \i>loz and
Yolanda, 1945
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

3-9. Ball Dress

Hand-colored engraving, 1823
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1942
(42. 74.2[30])
3-10. Paul Gavarni: Toilette du Soir

Lithograph, n. d.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
(49.50.339)
3-11. Yellow silk gauze dress
English, c. 1820
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Irene
Lewisohn Bequest, 1970 (1970.281.3)
(Sheldan Comfert Collins photo)
3-12. "Dinner Dress and Ball Dress" from Belle
Assemblie, 1831
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
3-13. Ball Gowns and Evening Coat of the 1850s
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Summer evening gown, Gift of Mrs. John L. Proctor,
1942 (CI 42.39.2)
Evening dress, Gift of Russel Hunter, 1959
(CI 59.35.2)
Evening coat, Gift of Estate of Mrs. Robert B. Noyes,
' 1943 (CI 43.7.8)
(Sheldan Comfert Collins photo)
3-14. Ball Gowns by E. Pignat and Cie
French, 19th century
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mary
Pierrepont Beckwith, 1969 (CI 69.33 lab and
CI 69.33.12ab)
(Taishi Hirokawa photo)
3-15. James Tissot: Too Early
Oil on canvas, 1873
Guildhall Art Gallery
(Bridgeman Art Library photo)
3-16. James Abbott McNeill Whisder: Arrangement in

Fles!J Color and Black

Oil on canvas, c. 1883
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wolfe Fund,
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, 1913 (13.20)
3-17. Accessories of the ball (from left):
Shawl of changeant silk: The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Gift of Mrs. William H. Johns, 1944 (CI 44.92.6)
Posy holder of gilt and mother-of-pearl: Collection of
Carolyn Solomon
Boa of pleated silk organdy: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Earl Rowe, 1951
(CI 51.15.6)
Lace fan: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of
Mrs. W. Whitewright Watson, 1939 (CI 39.127, 4ab)
Kid gloves with pearl buttons: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art (unaccessioned)
lvor)r fan with silk and sequins: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Gift of Agnes Miles Carpenter, 1955
(CI 55.43.23)
Evening slippers: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift ofJulia B. Henry, 1978 (1978.288.54ab)
Lace handkerchief: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift of Adele Simpson, 1954 (CI 54.45. 7)
Faberge carnets de bat: Courtesy of A Ia Vieille Russie,
New York
Flowers: Courtesy of Shepard-Clark
3-18. Wilhelm Gause: Ball at Courl
Gouache on paper, 1900
Museen der Stadt, Vienna
(Lynton Gardiner photo)
3-19. John Singer Sargent: Madame X
Oil on canvas, 1884
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arthur Hoppock
Hearn Fund, 1916 (16.53)
3-20. Pierre Vidal: Warhington Etzlace, Boston Blanc
Watercolor, black ink, and wash over pencil, 1908
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1950
(50.606[31])
3-21. Evening wrap by Paquin, 1912
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Edwin
Stewart Wheeler, 1956 (CI 56.2.1)
(Sheldan Comfert Collins photo)

127

3-22. Evening wrap by Paquin from La Gazette de Bon

Ton, 1912
Thomas]. Watson Library
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
3-23. Jean Wonh: Fashion sketch, c. 1915
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
3-24. Dance dresses from Harper's Bazar, 1925
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
3-25. "La Douce Nuit" (dance dress by Wonh) from La
Gazette de Bon Ton, 1920
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
3-26. Flapper dance dress, 1926
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mrs. Adam
Gimbel, 1942 (CI 42.33.3)
(Cecil Beaton photo)
3-27. Dresses by Patou, 1933
Cooper Hewitt Picture Library
3-28. "Sonia" (gown) by Vionnet, 1931
E C. Gundlach Collection, Hamburg
(George Hoyningen-Huene photo)
3-29. Cecil Beaton: Coco Chane/
Photograph, 1937
Counesy of Sotheby's, London
3-30. Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Dresses by Milgram and Hattie
Carnegie
Photograph, 1941
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
3-31. Man Ray: Lucien Lelong Dress
Photograph, 1937
Counesy of Timothy Baum, New York
3-32. Dresses by Christian Dior, 1949
Evening dress of silk tulle: The Metropolitan Museum
of An, Gift of Mrs. Byron C. Foy, 1953 (CI 53.40. 7a-e)
Evening dress of tulle: The Metropolitan Museum of
An, Gift of Mrs. Byron C. Foy, 1953 (CI 53.40.5a-e)
(Sheldan Comfen Collins photo)
3-33. Cecil Beaton: Dresses by Charles James
Photograph, 1948
Counesy of Sotheby's, London
3-34. Richard Avedon: Dovima
Photograph, 1950
Copyright 1950 by Richard Avedon Inc.
All rights reserved
3-35. Bill Cunningham: Norman Norell Dress
Photograph, 1972
Counesy of Bill Cunningham
3-36. "Travesties" from Art, Gout, Beauti, 1927
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
3-37. "Musique de ce temps" from La G(lzette de Bon
Ton, 1921
Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library
The Metropolitan Museum of An
4-1. Walnut cassone
Italian, 15th century
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of George
Blumenthal, 1941 (41.100.188)

The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mr. and

Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1966 (66.91)
4-5. Decorated fan
French, mid-19th century
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mrs.
William Randolph Hearst, 1963 (63.90.131)

4-6. Edwin Austin Abbey: The Dance

Pen and ink on paper, c. 1890
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1921
(21.103)
4-7. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo: A Dance in the
Country
Oil on canvas, c. 1750
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1980 (1980.67)
4-8. Attrib. to Jean-Antoine Watteau: Peasant Dance
Oil on wood, c. 1700
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Bequest of Lillian
S. Timken, 1959 (60. 71.20)
4-9. David Teniers the Younger: Peasants Dancing and
Feasting
Oil on canvas, mid-17th century
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Purchase, 1871
(71.99)
4-10. Unknown anist: Folk Dance
Harpsichord case, c. 1725
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Bernice
Richard, 1980 (1980.146)
4-11. Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta: Masquerade Ball
at the Ritz Hotel, Paris
Oil on canvas, 1909
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Bequest of Emma
T. Gary, 1934 (37.20.3)
4-12. Jean-Frederic Schall: Mile Duthi
Oil on wood, c. 1775
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mrs.
William M. Haupt, from the collection of Mrs.
James B. Haggin, 1%5 (65.242.8)
4-13. Francis Picabia: No. 1 Bird and Turtle
Gouache on paper, c. 1925
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949 (49. 70.16)
4-14. Dance ofSheplzerris and Sheplzmlesses
Tapestry, 17th century
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift ofJulia A. Berwind, 1953 (53.225.11)
4-15. Eadweard Muybridge: "Nude Women Dancing"
from Animalluomotion, 1887
4-16. John Singer Sargent: Study for El Jaleo
Pencil and wash on paper, c. 1882
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mrs. Francis
Ormond, 1950 (50.130.139)
4-17. Paul Troubetzkoy: Danseuse
Bronze, 1914
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1929
(29.137)
4-18. Edgar Degas: Fourth Position Front, on the Left Leg
Bronze, 1882-95
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Bequest of Mrs.
H. 0. Havemeyer 1929, H. 0. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.394)

4-2. Johannes Dauer: Allegory of Virtues and Vices at the

Court ofCharles V (detail)
Carved honestone plaque, 1522
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of J. Pierpont
Morgan, 1917 (17.190.745)

4-19. Pavel Petrovitch Svinjin: Merrymaking at a Wayside

Inn
Watercolor on paper, 1942
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Rogers Fund, 1942
(42.95.12)

4-3. Hans Ruckers the Elder: Musical Party (detail)

Lid painting on double virginal, 1581
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of B. H.
Homan, 1929 (29. 90)
(Schecter Lee photo)

4-20. Fernando Botero: Dancing in Colombia

Oil on canvas, 1980
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Anonymous Gift,
1983 (1983.251)

4-4. Louis-Rene Boquet: Mile Chevallieren grand costume de danse pour le ballet du Roi
Black chalk and watercolor on paper, c. 1745

128

4-21. Elie Nadelman: Dancing Couple

Ink and wash on paper, c. 1917-19
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Lincoln
Kirstein, 1%5 (65.12.11)

4-22. Leder pere et fils: l'OungSailotJ" Dancing(detail)

Printed cotton panel, c. 1780
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift of Mrs. W. D.
Frishmuth, 1913 (13.166.1)
4-23. George Luks: Caktfll)fl/k
Monotype in black ink on paper, c. 1907
The Delaware An Museum, Wilmington, Gift of
Helen Farr Sloan
4-24. Edgar Degas: RdteatJ"al ofthe Ballet on the Stage
Oil and watercolor over ink on paper, c. 1874
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Bequest of Mrs.
H. 0. Havemeyer, 1929, H. 0. Havemeyer Collection (29.160.26)
4-25. Johann Friedrich Liicke: Minuet Dancers
Hard-paste porcelain, 1758
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift oflrwin Untermyer, 1964 (64.101.286, 287)
4-26. Unknown artist: Man in Festival Costume
Bronze, c. 1550
The Metropolitan Museum of An, Gift oflrwin Untermyer, 1964 (64.101.1551)