Page content
Resize textResize textResize text largerEmail pagePrint pageShare this page

Prints: "Grown Ladies Taught to Dance" and
"Grown Gentlemen Taught to Dance"

"Grown Ladies Taught to Dance," by John Collett, London, January 2, 1769. CWF acc. no. 1952-152 "Grown Gentlemen Taught to Dance," by John Collett, London, June 27, 1767. CWF acc. no. 1952-153

"Virginians are of genuine blood—they will dance or die!"1 This frequently quoted comment comes from an August 25, 1774, entry in the diary of Philip Vickers Fithian, a New Jersey visitor to Virginia who well understood his hosts. In another entry made on December 17, 1773, Fithian personalizes the problem of not knowing how to dance: "I was strongly solicited by the young Gentlemen to go in and dance. I declined it, however, and went to my Room not without Wishes that it had been a part of my Education to learn what I think is an innocent and an ornamental, and most certainly, in this province is a necessary qualification for a person to appear even decent in Company!"2 His remarks explain just how important dancing was to colonial Virginians. Dancing was integral—nay, essential—to the social life of the day.

Being an accomplished dancer was a highly desirable and much sought-after skill. Dancing instructors, either male or female, provided the necessary dance training. Children began dancing lessons at an early age. If they lived outside of town, itinerant dancing masters made circuits, traveling from plantation to plantation and staying at each location for a predetermined length of time to give lessons to neighborhood children. In towns, especially Williamsburg, children of the middling ranks and above probably went to the dancing master's home or a room he or she rented specifically as a dance space. Lessons were not just for the young—adults also took instruction. Every year, new dances came into popularity, and dance-crazed Virginians always wanted to know the steps to the latest dances. In addition to teaching new dances, dancing masters and mistresses taught deportment, social skills, and good manners.

The two prints, above, were engraved by John Collett in the late 1760's. They satirize the dilemma of those who, for whatever reason, failed to learn the genteel accomplishement of dancing at an early age. In the "Grown Ladies Taught to Dance" print, a young dancing master is instructing an elderly woman to dance. She is very stiff and ungraceful. Two small girls look on, laughing at the woman's clumsy attempts to dance. On the wall is a parody of this scene with a monkey teaching a cat to dance. In the "Grown Gentlemen Taught to Dance" print, a dancing master is attempting to instruct a middle-aged man to dance. On a bench in the background is a poor fellow awaiting his instruction. His feet have been placed in a form to encourage their proper (turned out) position.

1Hunter Dickson Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773–1774 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), p. 177.
2Hunter Dickson Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773–1774 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), p. 33.