Dance Lessons with Robert
The Stroll on the Board Walk
The Foxtrot or Fox trot or Fox-trot is a smooth, progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to Big Band (usually vocal) music and the feeling is one of elegance and sophistication. The dance is similar in its look to Waltz, although the rhythm is in a 4/4 time signature instead of 3/4. Developed in the 1910s, the foxtrot reached its height of popularity in the 1930s and remains practiced today.
The dance was premiered in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the husband and wife duo Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style.
The exact origin of the name of the dance is unclear, although one theory is that it took its name from its popularizer, the vaudeville actor Harry Fox. Two sources credit African American dancers as the source of the Foxtrot: Vernon Castle himself and dance teacher Betty Lee. (There is no certain information arout Miss Lee.) Castle saw the dance, which "had been danced by negroes, to his personal knowledge, for fifteen years, [at] a certain exclusive colored club."
the Foxtrot
Harry Fox (born: Arthur Carringford)
May 25, 1882 - July 20, 1959
American Vaudiville Dancer and Comedian
An American Classic
The only American ballroom dance, it is also the newest of all the danced. The Foxtrot originated in the summer of 1914 by Vaudeville actor Harry Fox. Born Arthur Carringford in Pomona, California, in 1882, he adopted the stage name of "Fox" after his grandfather.
Harry was thrown on his own resources at the age of fifteen. He joined a circus for a brief tour and he also played professional baseball for a short while. A music publisher liked his voice and hired him to sing songs from the boxes of vaudeville theaters in San Francisco. In 1904 he appeared in a Belvedere Theater in a comedy entitled "Mr. Frisky of Frisco." After the San Francisco earthquake and the fire of 1906, Harry Fox migrated East and finally stopped in New York.
In early 1914, Fox was appearing in various vaudeville shows in the New York area. In April he teamed up with Yansci Dolly of the famous Dolly Sisters in an act of Hammerstein's. At the same time, the New York Theater, one of the largest in the World, was being converted into a movie house. As an extra attraction, the theater's management decided to try vaudeville acts between the shows. They selected Harry Fox and his company of "American Beauties" to put on a dancing act.
At the same time, the roof of the theater was converted to a Jardin de Danse, and the Dolly sisters were featured in a nightly revue.
The Fox-trot originated in the Jardin de Danse on the roof of the New York Theater. As part of his act downstairs, Harry Fox was doing trotting steps to ragtime music, and people referred to his dance as "Fox's Trot."
The elite of the dancing world were soon trying to capture the unusual style of movement and when a very talented American, G.K. Anderson came over to London, and with Josephine Bradley won many competitions, he set the seal - so to speak - on the style of the foxtrot.
The Foxtrot was the most significant development in all of ballroom dancing. The combination of quick and slow steps permits more flexibility and gives it great dancing pleasure. There is more variety in the Fox-trot than in any other dance, and in some ways it is the hardest dance to learn!
Variations of the foxtrot include the Peabody, the Alabama Slide, the Quickstep and Roseland Foxtrot. Even dances such as the Lindy and the Hustle are derived to some extent from the foxtrot.
During breaks from the fast paced Castle Walk and One-step, Vernon and Irene Castle's music director, James Reese Europe, would slowly play the Memphis Blues. The Castles were intrigued by the rhythm and Jim asked why they didn't create a slow dance to go with it. The Castles introduced what they then called the "Bunny Hug" in a magazine article. Shortly after they went abroad and, in mid-ocean, sent a wireless to the magazine to change the name of the dance from "Bunny Hug" to the "Foxtrot."
The Foxtrot was subsequently standardized by Arthur Murray in whose version it began to imitate the positions of Tango.
At its inception, the Foxtrot was originally danced to ragtime. From the late 1900’s through the 1940s, the Foxtrot was certainly the most popular fast dance and the vast majority of records issued during these years were Foxtrots. The Waltz and Tango, while popular, never overtook the Foxtrot. Even the popularity of the Lindy Hop in the 1940s did not affect the Foxtrot's popularity, since it could be danced to the same records used to accompany the Lindy Hop.
When Rock n Roll first emerged in the early 1950s, record companies were uncertain as to what style of dance would be most applicable to the music. Notably, Decca Records initially labeled its rock and roll releases as "Foxtrots", most notably "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. Since that recording, by some estimates, went on to sell more than 25 million copies, "Rock Around the Clock" could be considered the biggest-selling "Foxtrot" of all time. Today, the dance is customarily accompanied by the same Big Band music to which Swing is also danced.
Over time, the Foxtrot split into slow and quick versions, referred to as "Foxtrot" and "Slow or Silver Fox" respectively. In the slow category, further distinctions exist between the International or English Style of the Foxtrot and the continuity American Style, both built around a slow-quick-quick rhythm at the slowest tempo, and the Social American Style using a slow-slow-quick-quick rhythm at a somewhat faster pace. In the context of International Standard category of Ballroom Dances, for some time the Foxtrot was called "Slow Foxtrot", or "Slowfox". These names are still in use, to distinguish from other types of foxtrots.
Irene Castle
April 17, 1893 – January 25,1969)
Born: Irene Foote
New Rochelle, New York, U.S.A.
Vernon Castle
May 2, 1887 – February15, 1918
Born: William Vernon Blyth
Norwick, Norfork, England
W. C. Handy ("Father of the Blues") notes in his autobiography that his “The Memphis Blues” was the inspiration for the Foxtrot.
W. C. Handy
November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958)
Arthur Murray
April 4, 1895 – March 3, 1991
Kathryn Kohnfelder
September 15, 1906 – August 6, 1999,
Jersey City, New Jersey
Murray married his famous dance partner April 24, 1925