Salty Dog Rag

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Hebrew: סלטי דוג רג. American partner folkdance. Lyrics and music by Red Foley.

The identity of the original choreographer is unclear. Some sources say it was "introduced" by Ricky Holden in the 1950s[1][2], others say it "goes back to the ragtime era circa 1911"[2] though in the latter case it would have been to different music, since the Red Foley song came out in 1952. It was presented by Jack Sankey at Stockton Folk Dance Camp in 1955[3] and at that time contained only two parts, what we would now call Figure 1 and the chorus. That presentation "bears musical, stylistic, and subtle choreographic resemblance to [Evelyn] Porter's 1937 description of an improvisational, Ragtime-style Cakewalk."[4] Frank Hamilton has also been credited as the source.[5] The story of the subsequently added variations is complex, but "[b]y 1969, all descriptions were of the full contemporary version."[4]

On top of all this, the dance is done differently in Israel than in the rest of the world. The standard structure of the dance is two figures and a chorus: The sequence is Figure 1, then the chorus, then Figure 2, then the chorus, and so forth. See example here and notes here. In Israel, on the other hand, the chorus is treated as just another figure, hence the dance has three parts that repeat ABC, ABC, and so forth, as in the linked Rokdim video. (Though perhaps this isn't universal even in Israel, see here.) How and when this variation was introduced is unknown.

References and Links

  1. Andrew Carnie's Folk Dance Instructions for Salty Dog Rag
  2. 2.0 2.1 ARHtisitic License blog entry of June 19, 2021
  3. Stockton Folk Dance Camp 1955 syllabus, p. 83
  4. 4.0 4.1 Folk Dance Problem Solver 1994, Ron Houston of The Society of Folk Dance Historians
  5. Mynatt, C.V. and Bernard D. Kaiman, Folk Dancing For Students and Teachers, W. C. Brown Co., Dubuque IA, 1968, page 42 (taken from reference 4 above)


Salty Dog Rag at israelidances.com

Video at Rokdim