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Using Nineteenth-Century American Social Dance Manuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Extract

Descriptions of nineteenth-century American social dances from which to make reconstructions are readily available. They are present in those neat, usually palm-sized, dance manuals and miscellaneous pamphlets which bounce out of a card catalogue or present themselves on library shelves: The names of Thomas Hillgrove, Elias Howe, Thomas Wilson, Henri Cellarius, and John Ferrero are familiar to those of us – folk dancers, teachers, and revivalists – who work with these books in our variety of ways. The questions that concern me are: What is the nature of the material in these “little” books from which we can begin to make reconstructions of nineteenth-century social dances? Can we make reliable reconstructions using them alone? What else do we need to consider when using these sources?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1981

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References

NOTES

1. Bode, Carl, The American Lyceum, Town Meeting of the Mind, 1956; rpt. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: So. Ill. Univ. Press, 1968), 110 Google Scholar.

2. Durang, Charles, Terpsichore; or Ball Room Guide, (Philadelphia: Fisher & Bros., 1847), 6970 Google Scholar.