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COWBOY DANCES |
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The whole step of this third part for the man (with the lady, as usual, doing the complementary or opposite step) is run left, right, left, and hop left as he swings his right foot forward, break hold with partner and with shorter steps in position walk right, left, right, hop while he turns left about face. Then side by side again and resuming the waist-shoulder position he rocks forward on his left foot and lifts his heel slightly instead of a hop, rocks backward on his right foot and again rises on his toe, rocks forward on his left and rises, rocks back on his right with a rise. He then repeats the third part.
As the music turns back to the first part, he starts at the beginning and repeats the whole dance as many times as desired.
The Varsouvianna
Perhaps the most graceful and most delightful of all the round dances is the Varsovienne. It originated in WarÂsaw, Poland, and from that city, with a few accidents of orthography, it took its name The dance spread all over Europe and took on different national characteristics. It moved on to our West, its name corrupted to Varsouvianna, and is a regular feature of our old-time dances. (So easy is oral corruption, I have even heard it unsmilingly called the "Varsity Anna.") It has its own special music, which can also be found in the Pioneer Collection of Old-Time Dances. Here it is called Ford's Varsovienne. For a real Western dance you should skip the first thirty-two bars of this music for it has been completely lost, and I have never heard it played in the West. Beginning with the thirty-third bar it is our authentic music. To be sure, since it is traditional with our fiddlers you can expect a little variation now and then from this printed score.
There are sixteen bars of this old standard Varsouvianna tune in the West. Our oldest pioneers tell me that these sixteen bars were always repeated once. Then there came sixteen bars of special waltz, which certainly improves the dance and keeps it from growing monownous. And in the musical arrangement just mentioned (Pioneer Collection of Old-Time Dances) the following sixteen bars are the standard form used for this waltz. But when I tried to get one of my fiddler friends to play it so for me, with complete |
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