Amesbury

Amesbury is an English Country Dance. It was published by Walsh in 1736, London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1991 and published in Retreads Vol.5. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 26 bars.

Walsh writes:
The 1st. man and 2d. wo. set and turn single, then the 1st. Cu. cast off the 2d. man and 1st. wo. set and turn single, then the 2d. Cu. cast off then 1st. man and 2d. wo. meet and back to back the 2d. man and 1st. wo. do the same, then all four hands half round backward the 1st. Cu. being in the 2d. Cu. place lead to the wall and back again; the 1st. Cu. lead thro' the 2d. Cu. and cast off

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 dances of Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-41st corners set forward, acknowledge, and turn single right back to place
5-5All meet partner
6-71s cast down as 2s lead up
A21-42nd corners set forward, acknowledge, and turn single right back to place
5-5All meet partner
6-72s cast down as 1s lead up
B11-21st corners advance, turning to end back to back in center
3-42nd corners the same
5-6Take hands in a back ring and circle right half
B21-4Lead neighbor out, turn, lead back
5-6All left hand turn partner

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=Amesbury

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1991 by Charles Bolton. 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.