Dancing With the Stars, 1830 Edition
By David Cardillo, Digital Initiatives and Preservation
Thanks to Dancing With the Stars, when one hears the term “ballroom dance,” they usually conjure images of the waltz or tango along with movies like Dirty Dancing and Shall We Dance? Many dance styles fall under the fairly large umbrella of ballroom dance, which also encompasses any kind of dance involving a partner. As such, it has a very large social component not typically present in other forms of dance.
A section of the Lewis Family Papers in our Special Collections, which are freely and digitally available, contains written instructions on how to do several 19th-century ballroom dances. These dances would now be considered folk, country or cotillion dances, from which some ballroom dances evolved. At the time, these were the dances the upper echelons of society were practically required to know for formal functions, and the regular folk learned as a matter of social fun and a way to meet new people.
One of the dances mentioned in this subset of papers, “The Irish Washwoman,” is described below.
Handwritten instructions for the Irish Washwoman dance.
Irish Washwoman
The first couple, cross right hands with the second couple, and dance once round, change hands, and dance back to your places, then the first couple dances down in the middle, and up again, cut off the second couple, and right and left with them. Then dance 4 hands round with them and back again. (And so on with the next couple.) And when you are done this, you ought to be in the second couples’ place. And they in yours. Then dance with the next couple.
The following YouTube video accurately demonstrates the dance as textually described above, with a few Celtic cultural embellishments.
It is also possible that the descriptions give the bare basics of the dance, and that some details are being left out due to common threads among all dances of the time or perhaps a lack of a common vocabulary. Indeed, these notes seem to be for personal use rather than a comprehensive guide, especially upon seeing the term “chasse” spelled phonetically as “shaw-say.”
The Lewis Family Papers consist of materials that document multiple generations of the family, spanning from 1696 to 1915. The bulk of the material is from 1791 to 1874. The papers are made freely and digitally accessible through the Library, Museums and Press. Members of the Delaware-based family were farmers and landowners who maintained business relations with many prominent citizens of early Newark. As a result, researchers interested in domestic and business issues of the time as well as local and national trends in education, politics and land dealings may find these resources especially useful.