Captain Cook's Country Dance
Inspired by Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams, for Playford style dances I have added a few extra symbols.
Captain Cook's Country Dance is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Corri, Dussek, & Co. in 1797 and published in 24 New Country Dances for the Year 1797. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars. The tune is in quadruple time.
Corri, Dussek, & Co. wrote:
Change sides & back again, Hands across half round, back again, lead down the middle, up again, Allemand.
Currently I cannot find who interpreted this dance. The Regency Dance site has a dance they name Captain Cook which is probably the same dance but the specifics of the interpretation are different.
The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.
| A1 | 1-2 | All, partner cross right and loop left |
| 3-4 | Cross back by left and loop right | |
| A2 | 1-2 | Right hands across... |
| 3-4 | ...and left hands back | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s lead down, turn alone, skip up, and cast down as 2s move up |
| B2 | 1-2 | All linked arm allemande right... |
| 3-4 | ...and back by the left |
If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.
If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the transience of my youtube URLs. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=CaptainCooksCountryDance
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 by George W. Williams V
My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.