Three Chairs: A Genre of Civil War Era Dance Games - Contra Callers

27 Jul 2023

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...."