A Man's a Man for a' That ~ RSCDS is a Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1981 and published in RSCDS Book 30. It is S8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. St32.
SINGLE FIGURE (Each strain repeated)
Hands 3 round on the ladies side hands 3 round on the gentns. side lead down the middle up again & allemande
OR THUS Set & change places with 2d. Cu: set & back again & whole poussette
DOUBLE FIGURE (Tune played twice thro' with repeats)
Set & hands across quite round with 2d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again set to top Cu: swing corners chain figure four round with top Cu: & turn your partner
The music consists of two 4 bar strains. Probably played as a reel rather than a strathspey.
The RSCDS is interpretting Wilson's DOUBLE FIGURE
Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.
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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, lead, hands across, rights and lefts, back to back (and probably others).
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 perils of youtube. 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=AMansAManForAThat-RSCDS
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1981 by RSCDS. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.