Phil Jamison

 RESEARCH UPDATE: AMERICAN DANCE CALLING

March 8, 2023

Over the last eight years, since the publication of Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, I have continued to search for additional clues regarding the origin and history of the practice of dance calling in America. When I was doing my initial research for the book, there were very few resources available online in digital form. That has changed dramatically in the subsequent years, and with new information available, I now have a better understanding.

CALLING VS. PROMPTING

In historical accounts, in dance manuals, and in the present-day vernacular, the terms “calling” and “prompting” are often used interchangeably. They are, however, not the same.

Prompting consists of short directives, using minimal words, as a reminder of something that has previously been learned. In the theater, a prompter reminds the actors of the written script. In a dance, prompts remind the dancers of what to do next in a predetermined sequence of dance figures. According to a dance manual from 1889: “Not a word should be used beyond what is absolutely necessary to make the call [prompt] plain” (Wehman's Complete Dancing Master and Call Book). Prompting is what is done at contra dances today. The dancers learn the order of the figures during a walk-through before the music starts, and during the dance, they are reminded, at a specific time, of what to do next. Again from the dance manual of 1889: “The call [prompt] should be so timed that the last word of the command is finished at the moment that the corresponding movement is to be begun” (Wehman's Complete Dancing Master and Call Book). This is appropriate for contra dances, Northern squares (quadrilles), and other dances in which the figures are choreographed to fit the musical phrase.

Calling is different than prompting in that it is improvisational, allowing the choreography of the dance to vary and not follow a predetermined script. The caller has the freedom to spontaneously change the order of the dance figures, or the dance figures themselves, during the dance depending on the situation or the whim of the caller. The timing of the figures can be freeform and variable, and the dance figures do not need to fit the musical phrase. To know when to call out a figure, the caller needs to watch the dancers, and it is necessary for the dancers to listen carefully to follow the calls. This makes calling more interactive and spontaneous than prompting. When calling involves more than a simple prompt, rhyming patter is often used, with the directives for the dance figures interspersed with extraneous rhymes and other comments directed to the dancers. The calls may simply be shouted, but they are often pitched to the music and sung out (“chanted”).

Dance calling was not a part of the European tradition, but prompting did occur. Though not at public balls, dancing masters would have prompted the figures of English country dances at dancing schools. At balls, the top couple would initiate the dance, effectively demonstrating the figures for those watching from down the line. The figures of these dances were simple and repetitive, and they followed the musical phrase, so prompting was not necessary. French cotillions, likewise, did not require a prompter at public balls, since they only involved one main figure alternating with the same ten “changes” (chorus figures).

In the 1790s, new French dances, called quadrilles were introduced to dancers in Paris, and by 1797, these dances were also being taught in the Americas - in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as well as in Philadelphia. These dances were longer and more complicated than the earlier cotillions, with multiple parts to memorize, and as early as 1800, quadrilles were being prompted at public balls in Paris. (Thanks to Richard Powers for this information.)

French quadrilles were being danced in New Orleans by 1802, and they were no doubt prompted there as well. That is where, in 1819, Benjamin Latrobe wrote of a Black musician calling out the dance figures at a ball. Latrobe and other Europeans, who encountered Black callers in America in the 1820s and 30s, were puzzled and annoyed by the dance calling. The question is: Were they surprised by the way that it was done in America – improvisational calling as opposed to simple prompts – or did they disapprove of the race of the callers? The dance figures were typically called out by the leader of the band (or orchestra), and in America, that meant Black musicians. Enslaved fiddlers had been providing the music at plantation balls in Virginia since the late 1600s, and Black musicians were the norm at dances in North America throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1792, French-American writer St. John de Crèvecoeur, who lived in Orange County in New York State, wrote: “We have not the gorgeous balls, the harmonious concerts, the shrill horn of Europe, yet we dilate our hearts as well with the simple negro fiddle” (de Crèvecoeur, Sketches of Eighteenth Century America).

Dance calling is fundamental to the American square dance. It enables the dances to be improvisational and freeform, and it is what separated them from the European dances. Dance calling, like Southern fiddle music and many other “American” traditions, is the result of cultural exchange and syncretism – the merging of elements from different traditions to create something new and unique. Independent of, and prior to, the prompting of French quadrilles, call-and-response vocalizations were a key feature of the Black dance tradition – in West Africa as well as the Caribbean. In 1789, French lawyer and writer Moreau de Saint-Mery described a dance, called the Calinda, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). As seen in this illustration from his book, pairs of dancers are accompanied by two drums, a “Banza” [banjo], and a lead singer (on the right) with a responding chorus of several singers (in the middle) (Moreau de Saint-Méry). (Moreau de St. Mery described the “Banza” as “a kind of rough violin with four strings on which you pluck,” and that is how the illustrator depicted it – as a plucked violin.) The dance, itself, is likely what later became known in North America as the Congo Minuet.

A few years later, in 1792, Governor John Hancock hosted an "Equality Ball" for Black Freemen in Boston. An engraving, titled “Negro Ball,” depicting the event appeared in a collection of poetry in 1807. This illustration shows Hancock greeting one of the dancers, while four Black couples participate in a country dance.

The dancers are accompanied by a lone Black fiddler, who is clearly vocalizing – singing or chanting – while playing, and he most likely was prompting or calling out the figures of the dance. (Fiddlers do not typically play with their mouths open.)

DANCE CALLING

Black dancers, unlike white dancers, did not have the privilege of attending dancing school to learn the dance figures, but prompting or calling out the figures made these European dances accessible. The key features of dance calling, mentioned above, which differentiate it from prompting, all suggest the influence of Black musicians and the dance traditions of West Africa and the Caribbean.

• Improvisation and Freeform Timing – When Englishman William Hancock visited America in the 1850s, he took note of the more improvisational and interactive practice of dance calling, which, as he pointed out, is what separated the American dances from the European tradition: “The American cotillion [square dance], unlike the English quadrille, is not composed of a succession of well-known figures, but may be varied ad libitum, and extended or condensed at the pleasure of the leader of the band, who is consequently under the necessity of telling you throughout the dance what to do next” (Hancock, Emigrants’ Five Years). In America, it should be noted, “the leader of the band” was a Black musician. In the Southern square dance tradition, the figures are independent of the standard 32-bar AABB structure of the European dance music, and as in the African tradition, the emphasis of the music is on rhythm, rather than the melody and musical phrase. As Cecil Sharp observed at dances in Kentucky, “The music controls the steps only and not the figures” (Sharp, Autograph Notebook Collection). This freeform timing is what allows the dances to be improvisational.

• Pitched Patter Calls – Singing is central to the African music and dance tradition, and as the above illustrations show, Black musicians in the Caribbean and North America were accompanying dances with vocalizations prior to the prompting of the French quadrilles. Corroborating William Hancock’s observation of American callers “telling you throughout the dance what to do next,” Swedish visitor Carl Arfwedson, at a dance near Boston in 1832, likewise noted “one of the [Black] musicians attached to the band constantly called out to the dancers the different figures they were to go through” (Arfwedson, United States and Canada). This constant vocalization “throughout the dance,” what Sharp referred to as “a mixture of prose and doggerel rhyme” (Sharp and Karpeles, Country Dance Book, Part 5), is clearly more than the minimal prompts dictated by the European dancing masters. The practice of pitched patter calls in the American square dance, like the other features that distinguish calling from prompting, likewise point to the influence of the dance traditions of West Africa and the Caribbean.

Regardless of where dance prompting first occurred (in France or America) and who first did it (French dancing masters or Black musicians), the American tradition of dance calling was no doubt influenced by cultural survivals of the music and dance traditions of West Africa. That Black influence is what separated these American dances from the European tradition, making them uniquely “American.”

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SOURCES:

Arfwedson, Carl D. The United States and Canada in 1832, 1833 and 1834, 1834.

de Crèvecoeur, St. John. Sketches of Eighteenth Century America: More “Letters from an American Farmer”1792.

Hancock, William. An Emigrants’ Five Years in the Free States of America, 1860.

Harvey, J. H. Wehman's Complete Dancing Master and Call Book, 1889.

Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric Louis Élie. Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue, 1789.

Sharp, Cecil J. The Cecil Sharp Autograph Notebook Collection, 1918.

Sharp, Cecil J. and Maud Karpeles. The Country Dance Book, Part 5, 1918.