The Bath Waltz

The Prussian Waltz

The Bath Waltz or The Prussian Waltz is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2023 and published in Colin Hume's Website. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

In his A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, Thomas Wilson published The Prussian or Bath Waltz on page 149, wherein he writes:

WALTZ FIGURE Each strain repeated
Chain figure 6 round with progressive waltz step waltz whole poussette with sauteuse step swing corners a la waltz

OR THUS The 3 ladies turn their partners a la waltz promenade 3 Cu: with progressive waltz step swing with right hands round the 2d. Cu: & chain figure four round at bottom with progressive waltz step

Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.

  1. Chain figure of six may be found on page 78. The top couple face their partner, as the others face their neighbor then everyone does rights and lefts until they return to where they started. Wilson does not specify how to fit the 6 changes into 8 bars of music.
  2. whole poussette is defined on page 15 and means: "top two couples join hands with partner, circle, counter-clockwise, one and a half times around the other couple to change places with them."
    Note: this is unlike a normal English Poussette as the couples travel once and a half around each other rather than once.
  3. swing corners is defined on pages 55-58 and appears to mean: the 1s turn partner by the right hand then 1st corners by the left hand, partner right, 2nd corners left and returning home the shortest way (by the left shoulder).

I do not know what Wilson means by a la waltz, or with a progressive waltz step (and according to Colin Hume, neither does anyone else), but it is worth noting that in Wilson's system each of these figures normally takes 8 bars of double time music, while here they take 16 bars of triple time.

The tune was published by Thomas Wilson with the dance, The Bath Waltz, in 1816, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume.

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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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), 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=TheBathWaltz-Hume

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by Colin Hume. 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
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.