A Trip to St. John's Court

A Trip to St. John's Court is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1709 in The Dancing Master, 14th ed., London. It was interpreted by Scott Pfitzinger (website) in 2019. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: G Minor.

John Young writes:

The 1. cu. clap Hands, cast off and turn into contrary places The 2. cu. do the same Then the couples being contrary, the 1. and 2. cu draw and change sides in their proper places; then Right and Left half round, the 1. cu. being at top, the 1. Man change with the 2. Wo. and the 1. Wo. with the 2. Man, and half round and cast off.

I found the phrase "proper places" a little confusing. No one is in their home place, they are proper and progressed.

For people to progress properly they must start B2 proper and unprogressed. This means that Right and Left half round must be three changes rather than two.

I have changed Scott's interpretation slightly by making the casts in A be 2 bar casts (rather than 4) and the two hand turn be once and a half rather than half.

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.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), circle, cast, lead, draw poussette, rights and lefts (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=ATripToStJohnsCourt

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2019 by Scott Pfitzinger. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License 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.