An English writer describes the dancing of the Mazurka in contemporary Russia: 

In the salons of St. Petersburg, for instance, the guests actually dance; they do not merely shamble to and fro in a crowd, crumpling their clothes and ruffling their tempers, and call it a set of quadrilles.  They have ample space for the sweeping movements and complicated figures of all the orthodox ball dances, and are generally gifted with sufficient plastic grace to carry them out in style.  They carefully cultivate dances calling for a kind of grace which is almost beyond the reach of art.  The mazurka is one of the finest of these, and it is quite a favorite at balls on the banks of the Neva.  It needs a good deal of room, one or more spurred officers, and grace, grace and grace.  The dash with which the partners rush forward, the clinking and clattering of spurs as heel clashes with heel in mid air, punctuating the staccato of the music, the loud thud of boots striking the ground, followed by their sibilant slide along the polished floor, then the swift springs and sudden bounds, the whirling gyrations and dizzy evolutions, the graceful genuflections and quick embraces, and all the other intricate and maddening movements to the accompaniment of one of Glinka’s or Tschaikowsky’s masterpieces, awaken and mobilize all the antique heroism, mediaeval chivalry and wild romance that lie dormant in the depths of men’s being.  There is more genuine pleasure in being the spectator of a soul thrilling dance like that than in taking an active part in the lifeless make-believes performed at society balls in many of the more Western countries of Europe.

Absolutely Slavonic, though a local dance of the province of Mazovia, the Mazurek or Mazurka, is written in three-four time, with the usual displaced accent in music of Eastern origin.  Brodzinski is quoted as saying that in its primitive form the Mazurek is only a kind of Krakowiak, “less lively, less sautillant.”  At its best it is a dancing anecdote, a story told in a charming variety of steps and gestures.  It is intoxicating, rude, humorous, poetic, above all melancholy.  When he is happiest he sings his saddest, does the Pole.  Hence his predilection for minor modes.  The Mazurka is in three-four or three-eight time.  Sometimes the accent is dotted, but this is by no means absolute.  Here is the rhythm most frequently encountered, although Chopin employs variants and modifications.  The first part of the bar has usually the quicker notes.

The scale is a mixture of major and minor—­melodies are encountered that grew out of a scale shorn of a degree.  Occasionally the augmented second, the Hungarian, is encountered, and skips of a third are of frequent occurrence.  This, with progressions of augmented fourths and major sevenths, gives to the Mazurkas of Chopin an exotic character apart from their novel and original content.  As was the case with the Polonaise, Chopin took the framework