Fantess

Here's the performance schedule for the Bridgerton Summer Ball 11 March 2023. The site map is also here.

Note that ticket prices increase on Thursday 2 March.

The event proceeds rain or shine; there is ample cover with marquees etc. for everyone.

Our experience so far with events is that people actually enjoy themselves more on rainy days. The psychology of why that would be seems clear to me.

Dancefloor etiquette

The main form of dance was known as the country dance, danced in a long line with a gentleman facing his partner. Depending on the number of couples, the dance took a fair time to complete, say, half an hour. During a country dance there is much time when a couple is not dancing. Conversation between the pair was expected.

Routledge's Manual of Etiquette (c1860) states:
Young gentlemen are earnestly advised not to limit their conversation to remarks on the weather and the heat of the room. It is, to a certain extent, incumbent on them to do something more than dance when they invite a lady to join a quadrille. If it be only upon the news of the day, a gentleman should be able to offer at least three or four observations to his partner in the course of a long half-hour.

And, to be able to converse easily whilst dancing was a skill that both s*xes needed to master.

In Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth Bennet first dances with Mr Darcy, conversation seems to be a trial:

They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again silent.

After a pause of some minutes, she addressed him a second time with:
“It is your turn to say something now, Mr Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some sort of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”

He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said.

“Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But now we may be silent.”

“Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?”

“Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”

A gentleman’s duty to his partner did not end when the dance finished. According to Routledge:
At the conclusion of a dance, the gentleman bows to his partner, and either promenades with her round the room, or takes her to a seat. Where a room is set apart for refreshments, he offers to conduct her thither. At a public ball no gentleman would, of course, permit a lady to pay for refreshments.

There was a correct way to lead your partner to and from the dancefloor. In The Dancers’ Guide (1821), Chivers wrote:
In conducting a lady either to or from the dance, the gentleman should take the lady’s left hand within his right (ie the lady should be on the right side of a gentleman).

Freeling urged ladies to rely on their partners. He wrote in The Ladies’ Pocket Book of Etiquette (1840):
If in the intervals of dancing you wish to go from one part of the room to another, you will request your partner to conduct you; on no account be seen parading the room by yourself.

The next article continues with dance floor etiquette.