By Gregory Clark, March 9, 1929.
“ALL swing out in your places ALL!
Allemany left with the lady on your left,
RIGHT to your honey and grand right and left,
Your right foot up and your left foot DOWN,
Hand over hand and so on around,
And hurry up boys or you’ll never git around!
And grab that calico and roll ‘er all around!”
If any of Toronto’s Hill-billies think they have a monopoly of whoopee, they have another blush coming.
You will not see whoopee at the Silver Slipper or the Palais Royale1: nor at the elite ballrooms where those who dwell north of the parliament buildings commit their shuckings or comings-out; nor at King St. Childs nor anywhere those young people gather whose watchword is whoopee.
If you want to see real whoopee being made. you must go to one of those more democratic dance halls where the country square dance is being reintroduced.
When Henry Ford announced. four or five years ago, that the old-fashioned square dances had more in them than all the foxtrots, one steps and waltzes in the world, we all reflected that a man who was as right about motor cars as Mr. Ford must be wrong on all other subjects. We newspapermen were blamed at that time for making a rather feeble attempt to create a diversion by trying to revive a folk-habit that was as dead as the oil lamp.
But Henry was right again. The square dance, the country dance, is coming back.
Not in the country, where it never went out. But in the city. In literally dozens of Toronto dance halls, three or four square dances are part of every regular program. Three years ago, if anyone had suggested a square dance in such sophisticated company as you will find in a College St. or Dufferin St. dance hall, he would have been amongst the police court complainants the next morning. But in three short years the country dance has come home with a whoopee and a bang. You will see in Toronto to-day any amount of young men and women who never were farther into the country than Agincourt and whose ancestry has never tasted pump water for five generations trying to forget the languor of the one-step and concentrating with all their might on “rollin’ her around for the good of the floor.”
A week or two ago, the Vegetable Growers Association rented the Silver Slipper for a Wednesday night and invited the country gentry from all around to come in to town for a little real old time whoopee. An orchestra that can do hoe-down till the rooster crows was put in the place of that skilful spine-chiller of saxophone and highwayman guitar. A caller stood on a high platform ready to call off the figures and reels. And from Malton and Brampton, Georgetown and Kleinburg, Cooksville and Bolton, came the farmers by the hundred, to foregather in this palace of the modern dance. And the silken hangings and the jazz decorations shuddered and quivered and turned pale as the building rocked and thundered to the healthy dances in which men are gents and ladies are honeys.
That is the beginning. There were enough Toronto Hill-billies present that night to see the out-of-town people making real whoopee. And they went away entertaining curious and exciting thoughts. It will not be long now until square dances will appear even on the highly waxed floors where you can’t “Tamarack ‘er down on the old white pine” without spoiling the polish. It will only be a little while until no debutante will feel she is really “out” until she has participated in a country dance and touched the hands of all her multitude of guests in the really stately and very beautiful measures of an old-fashioned barn dance.
The National Dance of Canada
This writer has seen all kinds of national dances. In the course of newspaper work, a man is tipped off to go and see all kinds of Slav and Czechoslovak national dances being done “right here in Toronto.” And it is supposed to be very quaint and colorful. But the story we have been neglecting for years has been right at our door. The national dance of Ontario, of Canada and of America. For the same dances are done in Quebec and Alberta and Colorado as are done in Ontario. For stamping, they make the Russian dance seem sissy. For whirling, they make the Dervish dances seem timid. For whoopee, they seem to be proof that there is something in the air of a city that takes the ginger and life out of the best of us.
George W. Wade is the premier caller in Toronto. He and his hoe-down orchestra have been quietly riding along for two or three years on the mounting crest of the country dance’s popularity. To start with, most of their engagements were out in the towns. Their largest dances were in St. Catharines, Beamsville and such places as Columbus. Their competition in the smaller towns and villages were the old-time fiddlers and the local callers. But when a city band of hoe-down musicians and a caller who had picked up his art during his youthful travels all over Canada and the northern states began to compete with the limited musical accompaniment of the countryside, the return of the country dance to the city was coming in sight.
To-day, this band is one of many bands qualified to provide the stuff that makes the square dance. And amongst several dance halls that are specializing in country dances in Toronto, Mr. Wade’s company stages a regular weekly dance which attracts hundreds.
The night we attended this old-time dance, there were five hundred and fifty people dancing on the floor of the good-sized association hall. They were packed into every corner. There was not room for another set. Many were turned away.
Outside the hall were parked cars that were muddy with the highways from away up country. Yes, actually! There were country people who drove thirty and forty miles into Toronto to attend a barn dance in a city dance hall! After all, what is thirty miles to anybody now? An, hour or so in the car.
It used to be, a few years ago, a sort of good-humored idea for city folks to drive out into the country to attend an old-time dance. Now it is the fashion for the country people to drive into the city to attend an old-time dance!
It was a great sight. The public hall filled up rapidly with people of all ages. That sameness of age that is characteristic of city dance halls was strikingly absent. Grandmothers came and sat on the chairs along the side of the floor. They did not dance, but their families and friends formed their sets of four couples out on the floor where the old folks could watch them, with much clapping and much smiling and laughter. Middle-aged people were there to dance. Young people danced with them.
The very first thought that entered our heads as we looked down on the assembling throng of people was that this was some sort of a family gathering. There were parents and children uncles and nieces. You could see that. Family parties. And family parties, as you know well, the modern dance had just about scotched.
It’s a Real Old Hoe-Down
Well up at the far end of the floor, on the platform, sat the six musicians, a piano, two fiddles, a banjo and a guitar. And most important of all, the caller. Mr. Wade, leaning nonchalantly – and nonchalance is an essential part of the caller’s art as is the weirdly exciting rhythm of his voice – leaning gracefully against the piano.
The caller cried:
“Partners for a square dance.”
And in great excitement and laughter, with the fluttering of bright colored dresses, very different from the pale elegance of a ballroom’s color, with its ivories and golds and georgettes, the sets were formed. A set is four couples. And they form in a square, couples facing couples.
Then with a great bang. the orchestra started up its lively, old-fashioned and familiar strain. Above the loud shuffle and rhythm of the dancers’ feet, there rose the clear, droning baritone of the caller. In haunting, broken rhythm, with strange stresses and accents on certain words, some of it sung for a brief instant, some of it droned in perfect time to the music, some of it almost shouted, the control of the country dance proceeded.
For the caller actually makes the dance. Figure by figure, step by step, he intones the instructions for every single movement amongst these five hundred and more men and women all dancing for their lives and all doing it perfectly together:
“ALL swing out in your places ALL!
Allemany left with the lady on your left,
RIGHT to your honey and grand right and left,
Your right foot up and your left foot DOWN,
Hand over hand and so on around,
And hurry up boys or you’ll never git around!
And grab that calico and roll ‘er all around!”
The quick, flickering tune of the music. the vast swish, swish, of the dancers’ feet, punctuated with stamps when the caller demands it. Each set weaving, in and out, bowing to each other in quaint little gestures of “footin'” and ending with a swing – each gent seizing his lady and whirling her around.
The pattern of all these square dances is the same. The first “change” as it is called, puts each couple through the same figures. one after another. Then comes the second change of the dance, in which the caller puts not each couple but pairs of couples or four dancers through the same figures in turn.
And then comes the third and last phase, the “break-down.” This is the climax of the dance, in which the caller, with great smoothness and never a slip. puts not the couples but the entire set of eight through their figures, at ever increasing pace, with louder music, with cries and laughter from the dancers, through swift figures, more intricate than ever, until the dance ends in a great, whirling exciting whoopee. And instead of the little patter of polite hand-clapping that marks the end of the modern dance, there rises a tumult of cheers and girls’ laughter. No encore for that. Just cheering the caller and the fiddlers and themselves for a great old hop-down.
“The Gents Their Black and Tan”
In between the country dances, these city functions insert a fox trot or a waltz. And how stupid and dull it looks compared to the picturesque, leaping, exciting mass of movement that had been on the floor a moment ago. The pairs, all young folk, dawdle around, the floor, looking blankly over each other’s shoulders. The modern dance, if it is exercise, is an exercise for the legs from the knees down. The country dance is an exercise for every muscle in the body, up to the facial muscles and the scalp..
After having in recent years seen people pay money to sit in Massey Hall to watch Russians and Sticko-Bohunkians2 and other nationals perform their national dances, we suggest that somebody rise up in our midst and put on an exhibition of native Canadian country dances. The least the Exhibition could do would be to set up amplifiers all over the Exhibition grounds, and on a special gala day, bust loose with music and a caller, and create the spectacle of “sets” forming up all over the lawns and pavements of the whole Exhibition grounds to do square dances on the green.
The Black and Tan is one that brought the most tremendous cheers at this country dance we attended on Bathurst St.
“Head couples out to the right and balance there,” was the first instruction of the caller. And the big room grew all alive with motion and color. Then the swing of the tune:
The ladles cross their lily white hands,
The gents their black and tan,
The ladies bow and the gents bow-bow
And turn them all around.”
And away they go, for five full minutes of increasing excitement and verve.
“Jump right up and come right down,
Hop up straight and come down eight,
Hurry up boys you’ll all be late,
Roll ’em all around on the garden gate!”
Or another version:
Hop right up and never come down,
Your band over heel and never come down,
Heavy on the white pine and ALL come down,
Tamarack ‘er down on the old pine floor,
Grab your honey and swing ‘er some more!”
And he has them coming down light on their toes until he calls them ALL to come down; and the beat of that tune is enough to make even a city slicker vault out of his side-line chair and join the fun.
Allemany left means to turn from your partner to the lady on your left, hook your arm through hers, swing around her and then take your own partner’s hand and swing past her, grand chain, right and left. first your right hand and then your left, weaving your way in and out past the others in your set, and when you reach your own partner again, you seize her with an expression of joy and “roll ‘er all around for the good of the floor.”
“Balance all” means that every couple does few little jig steps, facing their opposite couple.
Why Not Barn Dances for Debs?
But the king piece of the whole night of dancing was the “old-fashioned barn dance.”
The dancers formed in two huge circles. Ladies the outer circle facing in and gents in the inner circle facing out.
There was no calling out for this number. The orchestra played that well-known air, “Wall I Swan.”
And here was the whole measure:
Each couple hand in hand, all facing one direction, took two slow paces forward, two back, waltzed three steps. ran three quick steps for ward, three steps back, the gents side-stepped two slow paces inward away from their partners then took three quick faces outward again and took the next girl forward in the circle.
In effect, here was a great ring of people, moving slowly and rhythmically, closing in, opening out, like some gigantic flower moving its petals, and all the time, the gents moved forward, the girls staying on the same place, but each gent dancing for a few bars with a different gal in turn.
What a beautiful and stately sort of a dance for a deb dance! How could a girl more gracefully and graciously meet all the men! How completely social the old-fashioned barn dance is. The modern dance is mean and stingy and anti-social. The barn dance and the other round dances, meet everybody up with everybody else. “I run the old mill (two slow steps forward) Over to Reubensville (two slow steps back) My name’s Joshua Ebenezer Spry” (three brief waltz steps).
Then the three little running steps, hand in hand, the three steps back, then the gents making their two slow sideways steps from their partner and three quick steps forward to their new partner.
Anybody who can whistle that simple old tune can do these steps, and that’s all there is to the old-fashioned barn dance, except that when a roomful of happy, solemn people are doing it, there is a lilt, a grace and a swing to it that has the mysterious effect on your eye that a marching regiment has, as if once upon a time long ago, man had rhythm in him and had lost it. But finds it, for a little while in the old country dances.
George Wade says that the square dances were bound to come back again when musicians became numerous enough to overflow the city markets and overrun into the country music market. In the city, people see so much of each other that when they dance, they want to dance alone, in isolated couples, as if they were apart from all the world. But in the country, they are glad to be together and they want to dance in company.
As soon as orchestras began to visit the country, the folks were livened up and they danced. But not the lonely dances. The company dances.
The logical procedure, as for these musicians, is to bring back to the city some of the spirit and excitement of these social dances. All the older people, all the people whose youth was spent in the country who had not learned the modern dances, were pining for their fun. And it came. It’s here. Hundreds of people are doing it.
And it is whoopee unconfined.
Editor’s Notes:
- These were popular dance halls in Toronto. Most have been demolished, but the Palais Royale still exists. ↩︎
- This is just a made-up word to mean some country you have never heard of. ↩︎
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