Vernon & Irene Castle

I posted a link to this in another thread, and I like it enough I figured I'd share it here too. The first half appears to be clips of the Castles; the second half is clips from an Astaire/Rogers movie about them.


Now I understand why they were such a big name way back when.

Cool!

Maybe we should adopt the Castle Polka (or the Maxixe) as the fifth Smooth dance! (referring to a recent thread about "American quickstep")

I think the footage of the Castles in that video are mostly the Castle Walk. I wouldn't mind adding that. It seems most closely related to Peabody in the figures, which looks a lot more vibrant when it isn't only 80 year olds doing it.

Oh, there were headings labeled "Castle Polka" and "Maxixe" in the clip.

Warren J. Dew said:

I think the footage of the Castles in that video are mostly the Castle Walk. I wouldn't mind adding that. It seems most closely related to Peabody in the figures, which looks a lot more vibrant when it isn't only 80 year olds doing it.

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Funny I was watching a clip of Peter Eggleton lecturing at Blackpool in the mid 2000s where he talked about how the dancing evolved from the full on man goes forward, woman goes backwards form, to where we swing "past". The Castle Walk has some of the former and it looks just as awkward as Eggleton described.

Thanks so much for sharing, Warren!

White Chacha said:

Funny I was watching a clip of Eggleton lecturing at Blackpool in the mid 2000s where he talked about how the dancing evolved from the full on man goes forward, woman goes backwards form, to where we swing "past". The Castle Walk has some of the former and it looks just as awkward as Eggleton described.

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Yeah. I noticed they spend most of their time in promenade.

I loved this... Especially the half with Astaire and Rogers...

Interesting. (I wonder what the first one looked like in 'real' time--the film was obviously not running at the speed of life.) Really interesting to compare the Castles themselves with Astaire/Rogers and see how the latter are already..upping the ante a bit. Part of it might just be the dresses (like Rogers's develope being so much higher) but part of it was definitely style choice.

If they were were going to try modernizing the Castle Polka or Maxixe I wonder what sort of music they'd have to get. What's playing wouldn't really fly for very long, unless they wanted to end up like the Peabody (the dance for the elderly.) Foxtrot at least lends itself to things that are easier to listen to and less mired in a particular era.