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So I thought I was just going to do a quick looksee and get a couple of examples of high-class dancing favored on the early side of the nineteenth-twentieth century turn. Instead I found this in Googlebooks: a whole book about class and dance in the time in question, though it seems to be American instead of not-Polish.
It's so wonderful. "Animal dances" -- I bet you thought "turkey trot" was just some regular hoedowny thing,right? The "turkey trot," the "bunny hug" and the "grizzly bear" were apparently single (not couple) dances where you kind of imitated the animal in question as you moved in a particular direction around the room. And there was spieling, which was waltzing so fast and in such tight circles that you kind of get off sexually from it (fun!).
It's full of phrases that tickle the imagination -- tango teas! tough dancing!
Maybe it's so attractive because I am not happy with my new beginning to The Drummer Boy.
I also found a collection at the Library of Congress "American Memory" site of dance instruction manuals from the nineteenth century, including onefrom 1890 or so in Czech! I can read a smidgen of it! Even though I am a lesson behind in my schedule and have not learned to speak much. But it gives me ideas about how to name the upper-class dances in my not-any-real-Western-Slavic language. No, I am not working out the whole grammar and etymology of the several not-Polish, not-German, not-Estonian, not-Romani, not-Hebrew and not-other-things-I-haven't-thought-of. There is a limit to how many cats I will wax.
One of the dances in "Elegantni tanecnik" is called "třasák" with the gloss "polka tremblante." Polka tremblante! How cool is that? By the way, the r with an antenna on it is unpronounceable by an English speaker: it is described as trying to say "r" and "zh" at the same time, but that only gets you onto the same continent, roughly. It's unvoiced and farther back in the mouth and altogether not a sound that should be allowed to be made by anybody older than eighteen months, since making the sound very often will probablky result in acid reflux, drooling, spitting, and fainting.
It's so wonderful. "Animal dances" -- I bet you thought "turkey trot" was just some regular hoedowny thing,right? The "turkey trot," the "bunny hug" and the "grizzly bear" were apparently single (not couple) dances where you kind of imitated the animal in question as you moved in a particular direction around the room. And there was spieling, which was waltzing so fast and in such tight circles that you kind of get off sexually from it (fun!).
It's full of phrases that tickle the imagination -- tango teas! tough dancing!
Maybe it's so attractive because I am not happy with my new beginning to The Drummer Boy.
I also found a collection at the Library of Congress "American Memory" site of dance instruction manuals from the nineteenth century, including onefrom 1890 or so in Czech! I can read a smidgen of it! Even though I am a lesson behind in my schedule and have not learned to speak much. But it gives me ideas about how to name the upper-class dances in my not-any-real-Western-Slavic language. No, I am not working out the whole grammar and etymology of the several not-Polish, not-German, not-Estonian, not-Romani, not-Hebrew and not-other-things-I-haven't-thought-of. There is a limit to how many cats I will wax.
One of the dances in "Elegantni tanecnik" is called "třasák" with the gloss "polka tremblante." Polka tremblante! How cool is that? By the way, the r with an antenna on it is unpronounceable by an English speaker: it is described as trying to say "r" and "zh" at the same time, but that only gets you onto the same continent, roughly. It's unvoiced and farther back in the mouth and altogether not a sound that should be allowed to be made by anybody older than eighteen months, since making the sound very often will probablky result in acid reflux, drooling, spitting, and fainting.
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