The orchestra is instructed to play some appropriate summer melody such as “In the Good Old Summer Time,” etc. Original description:Ī beautiful large bird house, made to be carried over a man’s head, handsome chenille birds which are numbered and named after the popular birds, and canary warblers are named to correspond with the chenille birds. I am reminded that Orthodox Christians in Russia use pussy willow branches rather than palm fronds, presumably because Russia's climate is not conducive to palm trees.
I'm not sure how easily easily one acquires real palm fronds unless (1) it's close to Easter or (2) one lives in Florida or California, but one could either make paper ones or substitute some other, more easily acquired sort of plant that has suitable branches. For some reason (perhaps the word "collapse"?) I picture this as less an orderly separation of the gentlemen and careful stepping-down from the chairs and more like the overly-crowded gentlemen crammed onto the chairs suddenly falling off and taking some of the gentlemen below with them, resulting in a heap of tailcoat-clad gentlemen in a pile on the floor clutching tattered palm fronds. I rather like the "Paul Jones" approach of circling for awhile and then doing a grand chain until.and these are the words that struck me as just so ridiculous that I had to do this figure."the Human Palm Tree suddenly collapses" and the dancers seek out people with the matching numbers on their palm fronds. I feel this would be more interesting if the distribution were completely random and sets of numbers just directed to particular corners ("one to ten over here!")Įach palm tree needs three chairs as many gentlemen as fit stand on them, while the rest of them cluster close and raise their palm fronds high.
The ten gentlemen for each palm tree and the ten ladies meant to circle them each get matching sets. The preparation (pre-cotillion) is to number two matching sets of palm fronds and divide them into sets of ten. The instructions suggest five sets of ten couples each, but in a smaller group I feel it would be better to have, err, bushier palm trees by keeping a minimum of ten couples to each, even if that means fewer of them. Not necessarily fifty, but enough to make reasonably robust palm trees and have enough ladies for a comfortable circle around them. The only props needed are palm fronds, but it does require a fairly large group of couples. Either way, this is a simple mixer figure with visuals that just make me laugh. I'm fairly certain some of Walker's figures were originally translated from French or German sources, and the grammar on this one makes me suspect this might have been one of them. The Human Palm Tree suddenly collapses and the gentlemen pick out their partners by matching numbers of palm leaves and a general dance follows. They may play ring-a-ring-Rosie or go through a grand right and left movement. The ladies now circle around palm tree representing same numbers. The rest of the gentlemen crowd around them and also hold up their palm leaves, thus forming a “Human Palm Tree.” The ladies who have also palm leaves, which are given them are separated into circles, numbers one to ten representing first circle, eleven to twenty next circle, etc. Three chairs are given to each group for several of the gentlemen to stand on and hold up their palm leaves as high as possible. The palm leaves numbered from one to ten constitute the first group and eleven to twenty the next group, etc. After the fifty couples have danced a little while the music stops an the gentlemen are requested to form groups of ten each.
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