From: mike@biosun.lbl.gov (Mike Collier)
Newsgroups: rec.folk-dancing
Subject: Re: the term "Master"
Date: 27 Sep 1992 08:40:50 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Distribution: world
Reply-To: mike@biosun.lbl.gov (Mike Collier)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.253.249
Summary: Dancing Master in Ireland
Keywords: Dancing Master, Ireland

In article <1a0us2INN8t9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> cd113@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Andrew Freim) writes:
>
>In a previous posting, Denys Proteau asks:
- 
- The term 'dance master' has been used a few times on this
- bulletin board, and I've heard it used in real life also. 
- Seems to me to be used mostly without naming the dance 
- master him/herself, and also usually in the context of 
- dance history. 
- This term has bugged me for a long time, and I finally 
- figured out why: it implies alot about the person it 
- refers to and sounds grandios, but to me it means 
- nothing specific.  Does anyone know if that term really 
- is supposed to have a meaning, say for instance that the 
- dancer has some sort of degree from a dance acadamy?  
- Or is it more of a embellishment?...(rest deleted)
-
>Subsequently there have been many postings on this 
>thread, but not one person has answered this poor fellow's
>question.  The contributions of Pat Shaw and Ralph Page 
>to modern folk dance are indisputable, but they
>are also irrelevant to this discussion. 
> 
>The etymology of this term has nothing to do with Martial
>Arts, Chess, or even Guilds/Unions.  Master in this context
>equals Teacher/Tutor/Schoolmaster.  As in mathematics 
>master, or fencing master.  
> 
>So, a dancing master was simply some poor hireling who was
>paid by the hour to teach you the proper steps, so that
>you wouldn't make a fool of yourself in front of your
>peers at parties.  People tended _not_ to mention the
>names of their dancing masters in the historical record
>because to admit you needed one was to indicate that you 
>were deficient in a genteel art.  The names of some have 
>survived with their instruction manuals, although it is
>believed that John Playford's _The English Dancing Master: 
>or Plaine and easie Rules for the Dancing of Country 
>Dances_, dated 1651, is actually the work of several hands,
>and Playford himself was merely the publisher.  
> 
>"...the art and figures of dancing (cannot) be acquired
>without the aid of a master..." Thomas Hillgrove, _The
>Scholar's Companion and Ballroom Vade Mecum_, New York,
>1857.
> 
>Good Lord, aren't there any other Anglophiles or dance
>history buffs on this net?  


	Good question.  I'll supply a little information about the Dancing
Master in Ireland.

	Breanda/n Breathnach put a short chapter on the dancing master in his
book, FOLK MUSIC AND DANCES OF RELAND, Mercier Press, 4 Bridge St, Cork, 1971
(and reprinted several times since then).  Breanda/n writes:

		The dancing master as a figure in the social life of
	the countryside appears on the scene in the second half of the
	eighteenth century.  Arthur Young in his account of his travels
	in Ireland in the years 1776 to 1779 remarked that dacing was
	so universal among the poor people that dancing masters travelled
	through the country from cabin to cabin, with a piper or blind
	fiddler, and were paid by the cottiers for teaching their 
	children dancing.

	Breanda/n goes on to describe the dancing master as "a somewhat whim-
sical figure, pretentious in dress and affecting a grandiloquence not sustained
by his schooling....  He considered himself a gentleman, conducted himself as
one, and endeavoured to instil this spirit into his best pupils."  The dancing
master taught step dancing and round or group dances.  These masters in the 
last century are credited with creating many set step dances (to be distin-
guished from 'Sets', 8-hand square-format dances, which are enjoying an incred-
ible revival in Ireland today) and figure dances (4- and 8-hand dances) still
popular today.  In some cases the actual author is known but in most cases not.

	Also the master included waltzes and non-native dances in his reper-
toir.  Some even branched out into other fields such as "fencing", which 
Breanda/n describes in Ireland as being "styled cudgel-playing".

	At any rate I hope this helps fill in a little of the history of the
dancing master.

						suas leis an damhsa,
						Michael Collier
						jmcollier@lbl.gov