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Dance Figures Index:American Country Dances, 1730-1810

compiled by
Robert M. Keller
The Colonial Music Institute, Annapolis Maryland

Introduction

The Dance Figures Index: American Country Dances, 1730 - 1810 is a guide to the basic figures in all American printed and manuscript longways country dances in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century sources.  It is drawn from a computer data base of information which was gathered from 82 sources, 53 printed and 29 in manuscript. This database only includes sources for dances with instruction for country dances, or dances that could be identified as such. It does not include other dance forms, such as Cotillions, Waltzes, Sarabandes or similar dances without instructions. It should be noted that since this database was completed in 1989, a number of new sources of dances have been located. These may be the source for other databases to be published on-line.

Three indexes were created from this data: Title Index, Source Index and Figure Index. Each index has 8 columns of information:

Column 1: Title of the dance as it appears in the source.
Column 2: Form of the Dance (Longways, Circle, Square, Set)
Column 3: Number of couples active in the longways minor set
Column 4: Dance figures
Column 5: Comments
Column 6: Time Signature for music (if music is shown on the page)
Column 7: Short title, genre, and date of the source.
Column 8: Page number on which the dance was found.

Title Index

The Title Index is sorted on Column 1. A sample is given in Table 1 showing several versions of "Fisher's Hornpipe." Three spellings of the title and several variants of two basic dance figures can be discerned.

Figure Index

The Figure Index (see Table 2) is sorted on Column 4. Looking under "CCLCXR", the first dance in the Title Index sample,     we see that a similar dance appeared with other titles, sometimes in the same book, sometimes even on the same page!  It will be important to look at the original source to see how close the dances actually are to being the same.  Note that although most are triple minors, one is a duple.

Source Index

The Source Index arranges the sources alphabetically by Short Title. The contents of each is listed sequentially from the first to the last page. Although all dances were coded, only the longways country dances are given in this index, thus there may be some gaps in the paging sequences. (see Table 3.)

Coding Procedure

2,738 dances were coded. In addition to the usual information such as title, page number, and source name and date, each dance was analyzed for its basic figures and number of active couples in the longways minor set.

Letters were selected to represent basic figures such as 0 for "circle", X for "hands across", and R for "right and left." These letters were then combined to represent the sequential figures of each dance.  The codes (see Table 4)provide an outline of the dance, and help to bring like dances together in the indexes.

Numbers were then added as "Comments" to provide clarification or additional information about the figures (see Table 5).  These ranged from modifications such as "half-way" to step specifications such as "rigadoon" or "minuet."

Details such as who is dancing with whom were not included.  This index is intended to be a research tool to provide access to the choreographies of early American country dance. Although the basic pattern of each dance is clear, dances cannot be accurately reconstructed from this streamlined data.

Example

As an example, the figures for "La Belle Catherine" are given in many sources as follows:

lst and 2nd couples set and half right and left.
Repeat to places.
1st couple lead down the center and back, cast off.
3 couples circle 6 half way round and back.

This would be coded as: "SRSRLCO" using the symbols:
Set, foot it or balance
Right and left
Lead down the middle and back
Cast up or down, but not "and back"
Circle or hands round and back

Clarification numbers R/2,0/2 would be added in the "Comments" column, indicating that the "right and left" and the "circle" are half-way round.

Acknowledgements:My thanks to Jim Morrison, Arthur Schrader, Susan Cifaldi, and George Fogg for their help in locating sources and providing photographs, hand notes or photocopies from which to code the dances.  Chip Hendrickson and Christine Helwig provided valuable suggestions as the work progressed. Finally, special thanks are due to my resident consultant, favorite dance partner and wife, Kitty, for her indefatigable assistance in editing, organizing and formatting.  Her bibliographic work was the foundation for this index.

Introduction

Coding Procedure

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4

Table 5

Acknowledgements

 
  Created and published September 18, 2001
© 2001. Colonial Music Institute^(tm)