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What Were Dance Cards? |
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You've heard the expression: "It's not on my dance card." But what exactly was a "dance card?" Ask Federico Santi, who maintains a wondrous web page containing images of dance cards of the past. As he explains:
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"Dance cards or 'Ballspenden' which literally translates as 'ball-donates' have been a part of Viennese culture for more than a hundred years. "Today, especially in Vienna, Ballspenden has come to represent the party favor or dance card that a lady used to record who she would dance with at a ball.
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| "In Vienna in the 1830's almost half the population of 400,000 attended almost 800 balls during Fasching before Lent. Those numbers of people attending balls through the years translated into the production of hundreds of thousands of dance cards for just one city alone, Vienna. | ||||
"Dance cards served two purposes: To be used at the dance to list in order the dances of the evening and to be kept as a memento of the Ball." Generally 1-3 inches in size, dance cards were made of paper, metal, wood, organic materials such as shell and ivory, leather, and glass. For a wonderful collection of dance cards such as those presented here — and a
thorough explanation of what they symbolized, please visit:
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