A framed, hand-colored etching by Thomas Rowlandson after G. M. Woodward, published by Thomas Tegg.

Six comic, caricatured society types are cajoled and corrected by French dancing masters into performing the steps of a fashionable new dance.

By the late 18th Century the term 'awkward squad' had passed from military cant into common usage as a description of a group of raw recruits incapable of understanding discipline or not yet sufficiently trained or disciplined to properly carry out their duties.

Here Rowlandson, in one of his favourite recurring themes, lampoons the modish aspirations of the would-be fashionable set as they are 'drilled' by their hired dancing masters.