How did our forefathers have fun? 

Chorégraphie Antique, the dance history ensemble of Goucher College, makes history come alive by performing ballroom dances of the Medieval, Renaissance Baroque, War of 1812, Jane Austen era, American Civil War, World War I, The Roaring Twenties, World War II, and the 1950's and 1960's.

Just picture dancers dressed in beautiful costumes perform vintage dances, recapturing the elegance of the courtly french menuets, bourrees, allemands, and lively english country dances enjoyed in eighteenth century America.

Elegant and refined quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, country dances, and gallopades to lilting melodies of the nineteenth century are contrasted with revolutionary racy dances such as the one-step, Argentine tango, Brazilian maxixe, grizzly bear, turkey trot, kangaroo hop, lame duck, duck waddle, and the crab to ragtime tunes of 1890-1914 era.

Take a nostalgic trip back to a World War II USO club where soldiers and sailors dance foxtrots, paul jones, rumbas, polkas, congos and jitterbugs with young junior hostesses.

All of these vintage dances have been researched and reconstructed from dancing manuals and music by Chrystelle Trump Bond, professor emerita of dance and founding chair of the dance department at Goucher College.

Chorégraphie Antique has performed at:

• President Barak Obama's Inaugural Ball
• Riversdale Mansion
• The Walters Art Museum
• The Baltimore Museum of Art
• The Maryland Historical Society
• The Flag House Museum
• Shriver Hall of The Johns Hopkins University
• Havre De Grace Cultural Center
• Carroll Mansion
• Hampton National Historic site
• Smithsonian Institute
• Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
• 1840 house in Baltimore
• State House in historic St. Mary's City, Maryland
• Governors' Palace in Colonial Williamsburg
• Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, and
• Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

Chorégraphie Antique, in collaboration with Musica Antiqua, an award-winning period music chamber group, received a Maryland Humanities Council grant for a project entitled: "Delightful Diversions: A History of Dance and Music in Early Maryland."

Chorégraphie Antique has performed in collaboration with the Peabody Ragtime Ensemble, the Towson University Early Music Ensemble, the Baltimore Symphony at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestray at the Kimmel Performing Arts Center, and the National Symphony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

As guest artists, Chorégraphie Antique has also performed with One New York Baroque Company in New York City, the English Folk Song and Dance Society in London, and at the University of Limerick in Ireland.