Using Nineteenth-Century American Social Dance Manuals

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?