Historical dance is the study of social dancing from America and Europe prior to the 20th century. (We cheat a bit because we love the Charleston!) Dancing was a common activity at all kinds of gatherings, and was a popular way for people to socialize. These dances have left modern legacies: ballroom dancing, English Country Dancing, American contra dancing, square dancing, and more. Historical dance attempts to reconstruct dances as performed when they were first introduced, which often looks different from the versions they have evolved into.

There were a variety of ways to learn how to dance in the 18th and 19th centuries: instruction manuals were published by dance instructors, young people took dance classes, and newer dance choreographies could be found in periodicals from newspapers to ladies’ magazines. Today, we learn historical dances by consulting written sources and reconstructing what that could look like in practice.

Historical dancing is an international area of study, and members of F&F have been privileged to study with prominent international instructors as well as doing their own reconstructions. If you’re curious to learn more, we hope you’ll join us!

Historical dance is a large part of our mission, and we teach at both daytime classes and evening balls. In addition to dance events we host croquet tournaments, winter outings, picnics, and other activities popular in New England in the 18th and 19th c. There’s plenty to do! If you’d like to hear about these events when they are announced, sign up for our newsletter. Or if there’s an event you’d like to see us run in the future, please email events@footworkandfrolick.org.

Partners are not required to participate in dancing - in fact, we encourage attendees to change partners throughout dance classes as you learn more from dancing with lots of different people. In fact, not only was changing partners considered polite in the 19th century, some dances require trios or other combinations instead of couples!

We’ve seen folks come to balls or other events with a group, in pairs, and even solo. If you’re ever nervous about coming to a F&F event, we encourage you to email us at welcome@footworkandfrolick.org so that we can help you feel comfortable when you arrive.

We often provide light refreshments such as sweets, fruit, tea sandwiches, etc. As curious historians, Footwork & Frolick’s interests have expanded into some of the surrounding context of balls and other social events, which includes recreating period recipes! (Did we mention cake? There’s usually cake.) However, we approach this with a modern eye for different dietary needs and do our best to offer a variety of options. We will always specify when an event is “bring your own (BYO)” food.

We always admire period attire, but costumes are not required to attend! For specific types of events (e.g. dancing) we will make recommendations for anything that you will need to participate safely, like appropriate footwear. At any event, comfort is more important than accuracy - if it’s cold, wear what will keep you warm; if you need assistive support, use it. If you do want to wear historical clothing but aren’t sure where to start, please contact us!

19th century dances can vary a lot depending on the source you are using - even if they have the same name! This means that the dances we teach may look different than what you’ve seen before. Dancing has also evolved over the centuries, so how a dance is done in a modern context (e.g. ECD) may not exactly match our period version. One of the things we find so interesting about historical dance is that it requires the interpretation of periods sources - which means that there are lots of different approaches to the material from different scholars. That’s pretty neat, and means we never stop learning.

Each member of Footwork & Frolick has their own areas of interest and expertise within our mission. What brings us all together are a passion for historical interpretation and a love of creating magical experiences for our event attendees. If you share these sentiments and are interested in becoming a “frolicker” yourself, please speak to any member at our next event or email us!

Members participate in planning and running evets, attend Quadrillion (our dance reconstruction and rehearsal time), and teach their research at events to the public. The time commitment varies but is typically 1 weekend each month, with some virtual meetings scattered throughout the year.