Meanings of words change. I would guess in a literal sense, even today's
MWSD is quadrille dancing, since it is four couples drilling dance moves.
"The word *quarantine* comes from a seventeenth-century Venetian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_language> variant of the Italian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language> *quaranta giorni*, meaning
forty days, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before
passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death> plague epidemic
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic>." -Wikipedia. Today's meaning
is definitely related to the origin, but has changed significantly in time.
Rich
On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 6:48 PM jim saxe via Contra Callers <
contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> John Sweeney raises an interesting point about the differences in styling
> between 19th century quadrilles (Tony Parkes's definition 1) and the
> phrased New England squares of today (Tony's definition 3), whether the
> latter have the word "Quadrille" in their titles or not.
>
> Where today's dancers would to courtesy turns, or replace them with twirls
> and other embellishments, 19th-century dance manuals prescribe a simple
> turn by the left hand. The word "swing" was used to describe a two-hand
> turn, or sometimes other figures such as a right-hand or left-hand turn or
> a circle, but certainly not something done in the closed ballroom-like
> position we generally use for swings today. Also, if I understand
> correctly, where we generally use a simple walking step for most square
> dance figures other than "balance" and "swing", dancers in the early 19th
> century were taught more elaborate footwork. (My impression is that later
> in 19th century, the fancy footwork became less common, though some dancing
> masters may have objected to that trend. However, I haven't looked
> carefully through available books of the period to check the trends in what
> people were writing, much less do I know how well what appeared in the
> books of any decade corresponded to what dancers were actually doing.)
>
> John lists a number of dances with "Quadrille" in their titles and writes
> of them:
>
> > But they are all just square dances. None of them bear any
> > resemblance to an actual Quadrille. A few like Western Quadrille are
> based
> > on one figure of an actual Quadrille, but with modern styling.
> >
> > It’s a nice word and sounds good in a dance title. :-)
>
> Those remarks apply at least as much to my own "Wardwell Quadrille" series
> as to any of the other dances on John's list. I used the word "Quadrille"
> in the titles simply because I thought it sounded good in combination with
> "Wardwell" ("Wardwell Hall" being the former name of the church social hall
> used by the BACDS San Francisco contra dance series). I didn't at all
> imagine the dances being done in an especially elegaaahnt style, and my
> preferred music would be old-time reels, not the 6/8 tunes of Tony's
> definition 4 of "quadrille" nor the sort of orchestral music used for those
> Viennese "quadrilles" that I referenced in an earlier message.
>
> --Jim
>
> On Feb 23, 2020, at 3:24 AM, John Sweeney via Contra Callers <
> contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> >
> > Calling something a Quadrille doesn't necessarily make it a Quadrille.
> >
> > To me the King's Quadrille is just a modern American square dance.
> >
> > It doesn't have the styling or the moves or the length/complexity of a
> > Quadrille (e.g. I don't believe that courtesy turns existed in the period
> > when Quadrilles were danced).
> >
> > The only commonality is that it is done by four couples in a Square.
> >
> > On checking, I find that I have the following in my deck:
> > Festival Quadrille
> > The Hawk Quadrille
> > Buffalo Quadrille
> > Camille's Quadrille
> > Queen's Quadrille (same as King's but the moves are straight across
> instead
> > of to the right) - also known as "The Quiet Square"
> > Easy Does it Quadrille
> > Knave's Quadrille
> > Karen's Quadrille
> > Western Quadrille
> > Wardwell Quadrille
> > Colonial's Quadrille
> > Farmer's Quadrille
> >
> > Hmm... I hadn't realised that there were so many!
> >
> > But they are all just square dances. None of them bear any
> > resemblance to an actual Quadrille. A few like Western Quadrille are
> based
> > on one figure of an actual Quadrille, but with modern styling.
> >
> > It’s a nice word and sounds good in a dance title. :-)
> >
> > Happy dancing,
> > John
> <snip>
>
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