I used to occasionally throw a twist or two into this dance, depending upon my mood and that of the dancers. I would sometimes suggest to the center person that he/she either dance alone to the bottom or take both of the other dancers along. Or, I would sometimes insert myself into the dance. These always added a bit of fun into the proceedings.

John B. Freeman SFTPOCTJ

Retired 

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

On Thursday, July 27, 2023, 2:06 PM, Allison and Hunt Smith via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

This is a very interesting article. I would be very grateful if someone here would share their version of it as done today, especially for a wedding. I have a wedding coming up in (eek, less than a month) between two regulars at our contra dance series. There will be a lot of our dancers at the wedding, and I think it would be a fun way to get some of the friends-and-relations who don't dance into the fun. There will be no alcohol served at the event, so no champagne glasses, please!

Thanks in advance,

The Other Allison

On Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 1:58 PM Ben A via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

I was curious about the origins of the "Brooms/Fan/Roses/Umbrellas" being used as props, and found this. 

Looks like others have wondered about the origins of this silliness - but no mention of rubber chickens!

 

Ben

 

 

https://www.kickery.com/2008/04/three-chairs-a.html#more

 

Three Chairs: A Genre of Civil War Era Dance Games

• Era: America, 1840s into early 20th century

"My friend Patricia asks in email:

 

 

Do you know of any documentation for a dance that is known to many as the "hat", "flower", "broom", "paddle", or "fan" dance? It is described as having two lines of people (usually men in one line and ladies …
… He/she looks back & forth between them, hands the item to one of them and sashays or dances down the between the lines with the other person. Sometimes it's done with three chairs, sometimes with no chairs.

I know several dances with most of those names (all but paddle), none of them what Patricia had in mind.  The dance she's describing is a variation on several of the mid-19th century cotillion figures also known as "Germans".  These were not cotillions in the 18th-century sense of a chorus/verse-structured dance for couples in a square.  Instead they were party games with dancing, some of which were quite silly and seem to us today more like children's games than pastimes for a formal ballroom.  By the end of the 19th century, the role of these games had evolved from an amusing way to end a ball into the entire point of the evening, and hostesses vied to run the best "Favor-Germans", with elaborate trinkets as game props and party favors for their guests.

 

American dancing master Allen Dodworth, writing in 1885, explained the nomenclature of these dance games as follows:

 

This dance was introduced in New York about the year 1844. At that time the quadrille was the fashionable dance, but was known as the cotillion. To make a distinction between that and this dance, which was known in Europe by the same name, this was called the "German Cotillion;" gradually the word cotillion was dropped, the dance becoming simply "The German."

 

The German connection is not fantasy: the earliest definitive source I have for the this sort of dance game is an 1820 manual published in Berlin and does include a version of what I call the "three chairs" genre of figures as part of a larger list of figures under the heading "Cotillion" or "Codillon".

 

Given Dodworth's dating of their introduction, these games are appropriate for Americans reenacting the mid-19th century (Civil War era) and later 19th century.  While many of the games used in Germans were probably in existence earlier (musical chairs, blind man's buff, etc.), there is no evidence of their incorporation into ballrooms of earlier eras outside of Germany.  Their history there, to the best of my knowledge, awaits further research.

 

The hat - or other object - dance as described above is clearly folk-processed.  19th-century dancers would not have lined up like that for a German; they would have waited patiently in their chairs for the dance leader to direct them a few at a time.   Sashaying down the room would not have been used; couples would have taken the opportunity to really waltz or polka.  Dance manuals from the 1840s onward often contained lists of cotillion figures, sometimes hundreds of them, often identical from manual to manual.  I don't pretend to have done a comprehensive survey, but there are clear roots for the hat dance in at least four different Germans, all of which use three chairs as a setup, as shown at right in an illustration from Coulon.  Note that the outer chairs face in the opposite direction from the middle one.  This is also specified in some of the descriptions below.

 

All the dancers would be seated in a large circle.  The dance leader, or conductor, selects the figures and directs the dancers, choosing a small group (as few as two, depending on the figure) to start each figure, which is then repeated until everyone in the company has had a chance to participate to the extent practical given size, balance of ladies and gentlemen, etc.  Each figure is done to music - polka, waltz, and mazurka were common - and involves actual dancing around the room with whatever dance fits the music...."

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