Foxtrot - What Is It?

Post date: Mar 08, 2014 4:40:34 AM

In 1914, a vaudeville actor named Harry Fox performed a "trotting" dance at a New York theatre that quickly became known as Fox's Trot, or the Foxtrot. Almost immediately, a husband and wife dance team named Vernon & Irene Castle adopted the new dance and popularized it with their elegant stylings. Vernon claimed that he had been seeing the Foxtrot danced in negro communities for at least 15 years. James Reese Europe, who was the musical director for the Castles, would play a slow ragtime during the breaks between their sets and suggested that the Castles come up with a dance to go with the slower song. So the Castles introduced a dance that they told a magazine reporter was called the Bunny Hug. But halfway to Europe, they wired the magazine mid-ocean to change the name to Foxtrot before publication. The Foxtrot quickly became one of the most popular partner dances ever in history. It resembles the waltz with its patterns, it's rise and fall movement, and its sweeping around the dance floor. But Foxtrot is danced in 4/4 time instead of the waltz' 3/4 time and it's a faster dance to match the ragtime genre of music and later the Big Band era of jazz. Over time, the dance split into two versions - one being really fast that came to be called Quickstep, and the original dance, which is slower in comparison, remained called the Foxtrot. Both versions can be danced to much of the same music as swing dancing, but are more commonly associated with the Big Band era and such singers as Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, and Nat King Cole and the dance partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (who did a variety of dances together, not just the Foxtrot).

Foxtrot is characterized by its elegance and grace. Although it started out in ragtime and was named for the trotting steps of Harry Fox, it is now known for its smoothness and fluidity. It has a mix of slow and quick steps, which gives it a great deal of flexibility and variety. The Foxtrot is a big, sweeping dance with large movements and the dancers typically glide grandly in the line of dance counterclockwise around the floor. Modern variations have given rise to spot versions, where Foxtrot can be danced in a small circle of space on a crowded social dance floor, but it is still associated with long steps and big movements. It is those long steps that give the dance its characteristic rise and fall motion. Competition dancers may not stick with dancing in a large oval around the floor, but they will glide around, covering as much of the floor as possible during their routines.

This video is a lovely little clip of the Foxtrot from a 1919 movie called The Oyster Princess, before the ballroom dancers got a hold of it and "smoothed out" all the trotting, turning it into the graceful gliding dance we now do today. It's much easier to see why it was called a Fox Trot here. You can also clearly see what would eventually lead to the Quickstep, with the bouncing movements and kicks. If you look carefully, you can see many steps that would one day find their way into the Lindy Hop and Charleston as well!

Foxtrot Scene - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TS0ffJ4sHk

Here is a video of a modern professional couple dancing the Foxtrot, now with all the smoothness and grace that we have come to associate with this elegant dance. You can see the rise and fall in the steps, and the long, sweeping movements around the floor. Note the steps are always slow, slow, quick quick or slow, quick quick; this is the basic rhythm for the Foxtrot.

Basic Foxtrot Demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6p46E1Zlss

And finally, this is a short example of what social dancing the Foxtrot might look like, rather than competition dancers. They start out with a very clear slow, quick, quick basic step and then mix it up with slow, slow, quick, quick, and even a few specialty patterns throughout the demonstration.

Foxtrot Demo - http://youtu.be/EOcG2cufH-s?t=22s