Spiel

The spiel was a historical dance from late 19th and early 20th century New York, which originated from the working-class of the Lower East Side and the Bowery. It was mainly performed by young women and children and became popular in the 1880s. The dance usually accompanied the music of the street organ in an uptempo triple meter, similar to the more formal European waltz, and its style was generally described as a frenetic, twirling and ecstatic.

Etymology and meaning of spiel
Until the 1880s a vibrant German culture had developed in New York. The verb "to spiel", originally from German spielen ("to play", "to perform"), was at first used to denote the playing of circus music (spieling), often performed on organs. The term was transmitted via the music of the accompanying hand-organ of the hurdy-gurdy man and eventually entered the street vernacular of the East side and the dance halls of the Bowery, often with spieler as the general term for "dancer". . In a more specific sense the term spieler usually described the women and children dancers, seldomly the male partner of the dance-hall spiel.

The original sidewalk spiel
IMAGE: Davis GA, A Harbinger of Spring on the East Side of New York. Hester Street, near Allen. Children and young girls dancing the spiel to the organ music of a hurdy-gurdy man. Originally printed in Leslie's Weekly, 28 March 1895. From the private collection of Allen IL, reprinted in ''The City in Slang. New York Life and Popular Speech'' (Oxford 1993).

The sidewalk spiel was mostly danced by young girls and children. James W. Blake's lyrics of New York's unofficial song of the time, The Sidewalks of New York, allude to the spieling by referencing the waltzing dance of children to organ music on the city's sidewalks. Not unlike the victims of the legendary German pied piper, the children would gather behind the hurdy-gurdy man and follow him from block to block, sometimes dancing an often frenzied spiel for several hours. Apparently only one testimony by former spieler Marie Jastrow has survived, which describes the sidewalk spiel around the year 1900: "[…] foolish, little tripping dances, they were. First on one leg, twirling the other one around and around to the rhythm of the music. Then, a change to the other leg, when the whole process was repeated."

Dance-hall spiel
Dances like the spiel functioned as a means and symbol of liberation. Like feminism, which was at first a movement of the petite bourgeoisie, the dances of working-class women helped them overcome Victorian social constraints, which emancipated them earlier than women of the middle- and upper-class. The dance-hall spiel usually paired female and male partners, whereas the former was often swung high off the floor. Hutchins Hapgood commented on the dance-hall variant, which quickly developed from the sidewalk spiel:"The dance-hall is truly a passion with working-girls. The desire to waltz is bred in the feminine bone. It is a familiar thing to see little girls on the East Side dancing rhythmically on the street, to the music of some hand-organ, while heavy wagons roll by unheeded. When those little girls grow older and become shop-girls they often continue to indulge their passion for the waltz. Some of them dance every night, and are so confirmed in it that they are technically known as 'spielers'."

Spiel's end
IMAGE: George Luks (died 1933), painting "The Spielers", PD (author's life + 70 years)

The girl spielers, specifically the dancers of the sidewalk spiel, remained "an enduring folkloric image of New York from the 1880s to around 1910", depicted e.g. on paintings by George Luks and Jerome Myers and referenced in other works of art, e.g. in the popular song The Spielers by J. L. Feeney or in the contemporary waltz rhyme reproduced at the end of the film Bowery Waltz: My Pearl is a Bowering Girl, As waltzing together we twirl, She sets them all crazy, a spieler, a daisy, My Pearl is a Bowering Girl. The popular dance of the working-class women vanished quickly, when street-organs became frowned upon and their owners disbarred during the time of the First World War.