Fun Friday Resources: National Waltz Day edition

Huzzah! It’s National Waltz Day! Have some resources.

Way back at the University of Georgia, I was a member of (and finally president of) the UGA Period Dance Group, so yes, I can do social dances from Shakespeare’s time to our own. At Governor’s Honors every summer I would do a series of seminars for the students, starting with the waltz and polka and working our way through country dances and early 20th century couple dances like the tango and foxtrot. (They were so popular that once I taught the waltz to 200 kids in a gym. I had to start requiring sign-ups to keep the numbers down.)

Do I know how to have fun or what?

This will explain why when I say “waltz,” I mean good old-fashioned, no-nonsense, early 19th-c. Regency waltz, not some namby-pamby box step thing, or hyper-stylized competition ballroom dance thing. It also means that if all you want to do is have an ecstatic time whirling your partner around a ballroom, then I can teach you to do that in less than an hour. (I’ll put instructions at the end of this post.)

I also happen to be a dab hand at composing waltzes. More on that in a moment.

Everybody knows the waltzes of the Strauss family; they tend to be a little fast (and too long) for most beginning waltzers, so I always use early 19th-century waltzes to start with. Here’s a nice little compilation by the group Bare Necessities to get you started.

The Library of Congress had a great collection of videos on 19th-century social dances, but they seem to be offline at loc.gov. They’re still available on Youtube:

Here’s another video, from How to Dance Through Time:

What about my waltzes? How very kind of you to ask!

• Fred’s Waltz, from A Christmas Carol; the “Christmas Waltz” from that one is also good

• Ginny’s Valentine

• Allegro gracioso (mvt 3 from Symphony in G)

  • from William Blake’s Inn:

    • the end of The Sun and Moon Circus Soothes the Wakeful Guests

    • Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room

    • The Wise Cow Makes Way, Room, and Believe

And of course, eventually I’ll get around to composing Ten Little Waltzes. Right? CRAS MELIOR EST.

How to Waltz

The basic step is a two-measure phrase. The steps are the same for men and women, with men starting with measure 1 (m.1) and women starting with m.2.

measure 1

1. Step to the left.

2. Bring the right foot behind the left: Do an about face.

3. Step back on the left foot.

measure 2

1. Walk: right foot.

2. Walk: left foot.

3. Walk right foot

So for the man, the count is “STEP TURN AND WALK WALK WALK”’; for the woman, “WALK WALK WALK STEP TURN AND.” The main idea is that you turn/whirl on the about face, and then walk around your partner while he/she is turning.

Easier in real life than from this, so good luck!