Valse à deux temps

Valse à deux temps, waltz à deux temps ("waltz in two beats"), also Valse à deux pas ("waltz of two steps") or Valse Russe ("Russian waltz") (Russian name: вальс в "два па") was a waltz of Russian origin introduced in France in the mid-19th century. A French dance manual of the beginning of the 20th century (a copy is digitized by the American Ballroom Companion of the United States Library of Congress) contains the following description by a contemporary witness:¶

I know exactly what I am talking about when I speak of the Russian origin of the Two-step waltz, as my father was the second person to dance it in Paris in 1839-- I say "the second person" intentionally, for the first was one of his students. I can still remember the following curious and little known anecdote about the introduction of the Russian Waltz to France, for the Two-Step Waltz is not only Russian, but it is even their National Waltz. Let me add, in passing, that their ladies and gentlemen excel in dancing; their energy, their brio, often surpass ours. In January 1839, the Baron de Nieuken, attaché with the Russian delegation, took dancing lessons with my father, and took them as they were given at the time-- composed of all the fundamental exercises of dance: pliés, battements, etc. Our baron had to go one evening to a great ball given by the Count Mole, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, and would have to dance the waltz with some charming Moscow ladies.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Valse à deux temps”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Valse à deux temps is type of dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶