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Country Dances, Ancient and Modern

Poussette

Also known as: Put Back, Draw.

Bars: 8 for a full, 4 for a half.

Poussette Half Poussette Poussette is a French term, originally meaning little push, and now meaning a baby stroller or perambulator.

Poussettes have a direction which may be specified in various ways as “clockwise”, or “1st corners push”, or “man 1 push, man 2 pull”. In a poussette you take hands with the person across the set (often your partner). Then one of you walks diagonally forward (1s down the set, 2s up) while the other backs up for 4 counts, then everything reverses and the one walking forward now backs up while the one backing up walks forward (but still moving the same way up or down). This is half a poussette.

In a full poussette you continue with the same circular motion until you end up exactly where you started.

Variants


Cooper's Rotational Poussette

Waltzing Turn Poussette

?Waltz Poussette

Old Scottish Poussette

(R)SCDS Poussette

(R)SCDS Strathspey Poussette

History

The poussette is an old country dance figure which acquired a French name in about 1770 when Cotillions came over from France. In Playford's day it seems to have been called "put-back" or, "draw" (depending on whether M1 was pushing, or pulling. Note: This is different from the modern "draw poussette", which Colin Hume suggests is a modern misunderstanding).

Playford's The 29th of May (1686) has a nice description of a(n English) poussette:

First cu. take hands, the 2. cu. doing the like at the same time; then the 1. man puts back his wo. and slips down behind the 2. wo. into the 2. cu. place, while the 2. man draws his wo. to him and slips into the 1. cu. place. Do this back again the same way;

While the even earlier Cuckolds all arow (1651) describes a half poussette:

Men put the co. we. back by both hands, fall even on the co. side
as does The Spanyard.

The Neals also give a fairly clear description from Dublin in 1726 in the dance A Young Virgin of 15 Years

1st & 2d men take both hands wth their partner's and back to back till in their own places:

The Regency Dance Site has a nice paper by Paul Cooper giving the history of the poussette in English dancing. Most English Country Dances use what Cooper calls a "Rotational Poussette", either going half way round in 4 bars to be progressive, or all the way round in 8 ending back where you started.

In William Campbell's 14th book (~1799) is a dance called Lord Nelson's Waltz. The instructions call for a "Poussette" to fill the last 16 bars (at waltz tempo). Both the Regency Dance site and Alan Winston say this should be a "Waltzing Turn Poussette". As yet I have found no contemporary description of this figure, and rely on Winston's description.

In Thomas Wilson's A Companion to the Ball Room, London, 1816 he introduces something called a "waltz whole poussette" for the dance L'Augustin Waltz on page 143. In a footnote he explains that he will bring out a book describing it. But if he did, I can't find a copy. As far as I know no one else in England ever bothered to define it, so we aren't sure what it entailed.

The National Library of Scotland has a manuscript (MS 3860), probably written between 1820 and 1830, which contains a description of what "Poussette" meant to them. Perhaps this is the Waltz Poussette? The dancers do not use ballroom position though. Dancers start near the center line (this isn't mentioned in the section on Poussette itself, but appears in the descriptions of the country dances later) and take both hands with partners and the couple moves in a large counter-clockwise circle around the other couple (as in a traditional poussette), but also the couple describes a clockwise epicycle about their center point. Each time the couple has moved 90° around the big circle, they have turned 180° around their epicycle. (Like a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star).

The author describes, a half poussette (which is progressive, and takes 4 bars), a full poussette (which is not progressive, and takes 8 bars) and a double poussette where the center couple of a triple minor does a full poussette with the top couple and then another with the bottom couple (non progressive, 16 bars). He also goes on to explain what to do if one couple starts improper, saying they should end the figure proper. This explains a number of 19th century scottish dance descriptions where such behavior is needed.

This manuscript says in several places (here and here) that Sauteuse Waltzing steps should be used for the country dance poussette. I don't understand how one can use waltz steps in a reel or jig though. In very faint ink, on page 104 there is a description of these steps entailed.

I have looked though 11 dance manuals from the 19th and early 20th centuries from Scotland, Ireland, and the north of England. In them the poussette is almost always preceded by "down the middle, up again" so it can be hard to tell which of the two is progressive.

But we know that in MS 3860 "down the middle, up again" was progressive. In almost all the other books I looked at there are dances where "down the middle, up again" is used alone, and in these cases it needs to be progressive: (The Fairy Dance for instance). In almost all the books there are dances were there are non-progressive stand-alone poussettes (Captain White for instance). So it seems likely that in most cases, even around 1900, the 8 bar poussette was non-progressive.

In D. Anderson's Ball-Room and Solo Dance Guide (Dundee, 1897) there are 10 dances (out of 42 total dances with poussettes) where couples start the poussette improper and need to be proper at the end of it. These are also all non-progressive poussettes in 8 bars. The poussette described in MS 3860 has this property.

There are also a few dances which appear to use a progressive half poussette that fits into 4 bars. Oddly the instructions don't call it a half poussette, they just say "poussette". For instance in St. Patrick's Day:

Four hands across half round and poussette, back to places, the first couple down the middle and turn half round and up again, four hands round at top, then turn to proper sides.

Here the poussette must undo the effects of four hands across half, so it must be progressive, and return people to their proper sides. This all seems to fit the description of poussettes and half poussettes given in MS 3860.

But there are some counter-examples

The Waltz Country Dance also called The Spanish Dance, or The Guaracha, (or some combination) has a 16 (later 8) bar progressive poussette described in Lowe's Selection of Popular Country Dances (Edinburgh, 1853) as:

Then pousette, Waltzing round each other. (16 Bars)

As far as I can tell this version of the poussette is only used in this dance or slight variations of it. This may be the same as Campbell's "Waltzing Turn Poussette"? It seems odd that one needs to remind people to waltz in a waltz so that suggests to me that this dance is an aberration and normally the poussette took a different form.

Then around 1870 we start finding a few progressive 8 bar poussettes, as in The British Grenadiers.

Bars of Music
1.Gentlemen No. 1, 2, and 3 join hands and advance and retire,4
2.Ladies No. 1, 2, and 3 do likewise,4
3.The three couples promenade to places,8
4.Gentlemen No. 1 and 2, and ladies No. 1 and 2, give right hands across, back giving left,8
5.Pousette, (using Galop step, making a half turn with each,8

I can't help but wonder... given that St. Patrick's Day above uses "poussette" to describe a half poussette, if this might just be another half poussette masquerading as a full one. MS 3860 says to fill up unused music with setting (when describing an improper poussette), so perhaps that should be done here too.

This last line is frustrating, it is as if the author intended to describe a poussette, but broke off right after beginning. However it does sound rather like the description in MS 3860 where couples do a half turn about their own center as they turn 90° about the center of the minor set. Wallace published another book in ~1900 with the same words describing the poussette. So presumably he thought the poussette hadn't changed in the intervening 30 years.

Note that this description does not fit the (R)SCDS poussette which involves two quarter turns and a half turn, nor their diamond poussette.

Looking back from the 1960s, the Fletts say:

The Pousette. This figure, which is performed by two couples starting from adjacent positions, is one of the principal figures used to achieve the progression down the set. It occurs only in dances in quick tempo and occupies eight bars of music.
In the form of the pousette used in Scotland within living memory, the two couples essentially just waltz round each other. The dancers take ordinary ballroom hold or some similar hold with their partners and use a simple waltz-type step, and the two couples move around each other in a counter-clockwise direction to exchange places, each couple at the same time rotating on its own axis in a clockwise direction, making two or more complete turns in the performance of the figure. The two men place their partners in position on the ladies' side, and fall back to their own side with one or two pas de Basque while their partners dance pas de Basque on the spot.

That's what the Fletts said in 1960. That's not what the books I have looked at imply. Poussette obviously occured in waltzes, which are not quick tempo dances. Of course the books say what city dancing masters want their students to do, that may not be what rural dancers were actually doing.

In the US, in 1802, Saltator wrote:

POUCETTE, is to give both hands to partners, by couples and dance round each other, in the time of right and left.

Asa Wilcox was using poussettes in ~1793:

Colledge Hornpipe
Four hand cross roud back again first & third Couple Draw cross over one Couple - Right & left at top -

As was Saltator in 1802 (see Lasses of Glasgow).

But after that Poussettes died out in the United States, and Howe (who published from 1858-1880 in Boston) did not used them.

References

Some dances which (probably) use this figure

See Also

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