I wanted to deep dive into a little bit of a mystery in period drama: you often see at balls in period drama women recording the names of their dance partners beside the name of each dance in a little card – a dance card – tied to their wrists with pieces of ribbons, with tiny pencils (reminiscent of an Ikea pencil, in my opinion).

Actually, the first time I ever saw someone wielding a dance card in a film (or even learned about them) was when Doris Day attends a ball in Calamity Jane, which is very much set in the later half of the nineteenth century.

We see this all the time in Bridgerton: there’s a great part in Season 2, when reluctant debutante and ball attendee Eloise Bridgerton fills in her card with fake names so that she doesn’t have to do any actual dancing.

But… dance cards might not have been used in England by then.

It’s a little bit murky when dance cards came into common use, and they may have been in use by the later Regency period, and when George IV had actually come to the throne after 1820. (The one at the beginning of this post is British, but it is from 1883, and is in the collection of the Met Museum).

The earliest evidence I’ve seen in England is of a silver dance card holder from 1835, which had ivory sheets inside to note names upon next to a list of dances, as well as space for a pencil to be included. You can see that example here.

However, dance cards in mainland Europe had been around for a little while prior to this point, and really became popular at balls in Vienna in the early nineteenth century.

Personal holders were part of a lady’s accessories for an evening at a ball, and as the nineteenth century progressed, pre-printed cards, elaborately decorated in line with the theme of a ball and handed out to attendees, became more popular.

Hear more about dance cards in my reel here:

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