What sort of dances were they doing in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century?

The primary dances of the ballroom were the country dance and the reel. The country dance was done by long sets of couples, with the dance beginning with the first couple, with a new couple leading off after the first couple had gone down three couples, and thus slowly spreading down the set until everyone was dancing. Tunes and dances were in many cases only loosely associated - the same dance could be set to different tunes, and tunes could each have multiple dances set to them. It was also possible for the lady leading off each dance to call for a particular tune and set her own figures to it - the other couples in the set would have to pick it up by watching!

In the late 1810's and early 1820's, threatened or inspired by the popularity of the quadrille, dancing masters had created several variations on the standard country dance, including the Danse Ecossoise, Danse Espagnole, Mescolanze, and Swedish Dance. These dances vary the standard format by incorporating quadrille figures, arranging the dancers in threes or fours, having couples lead off improper, leading off after only two progressions rather than three, dancing in a circle, starting in the center of a set, or some combination of these changes.

The reel, or Scotch reel, in its original version was a dance for three or four people alternating weaving figures (heys) and setting steps displaying lively and elaborate footwork. Fancier reels for three, four, five, or six were also developed by the London dancing master Thomas Wilson and eightsome reels (at least one with French footwork!) appear in some sources.

Two holdovers from the Baroque era were the minuet and the allemande. The minuet was a slow, formal dance performed by one couple at a time. By the early nineteenth century, it had declined to being danced only as the opening dance at a ball. The allemande is not mentioned much (if at all) in period descriptions of the ballroom, but allemande music continued to be included in music manuals.

The cotillion was an eighteenth-century French dance imported into England. It was generally performed by eight dancers in a square, with complex figures alternating with simple figures for the entire set (known as "changes".) This was an 18th-century dance fading in popularity by the early 19th century in England.

In the mid-1810's, the quadrille was introduced in England, retaining the eight-person square and the figures for one or two couples at a time but leaving out the changes. Generally a set of quadrilles would consist of five or six of these figures, with the final one being a cotillion-like figure involving the entire square. The original set of French quadrilles was rapidly joined by variations for its fourth and fifth figures and then by other quadrilles, including the earliest version of the Lancers' Quadrille.

The other, more famous, French import was, of course, the infamous waltz. Following centuries of dancing in which the couples touched only hands, the waltz was originally considered a scandal due to the close "embrace" employed by the dancers. Wilson presented four variations (the French Slow, Sauteuse, and Jette waltzes plus the German waltz) for the English ballroom, danced variously in 3/4, 3/8, 2/4, or 6/8 time and including leaps and a variety of hand positions.

Two hard-to-categorize dances of the period are "Le Boulanger" (sometimes found as "La Boulangere") and "Sir Roger de Coverley." Both were easy, repetitive "mixer" dances where each person got to dance at least a little with every member of the opposite sex. "Sir Roger" was danced by a line of couples, and was often used as the closing dance at balls (the concept of the "last waltz" is post-Regency). It is the direct ancestor of (and is very similar to) the "Virginia Reel." "Le Boulanger" was derived from an eighteenth-century cotillion figure and was danced by a circle of couples. Both are mentioned in nineteenth-century literature - "Sir Roger" by Charles Dickens and "Le Boulanger" by Jane Austen - and continued to appear in dance manuals well into the middle of the century.

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