Beaux of Oak Hill ~ Howe

Beaux of Oak Hill ~ Howe Beaux of Oak Hill

Beaux of Oak Hill ~ Howe is an American Country Dance. It was published by Elias Howe in 1862 in American Dancing Master, Boston. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

This is an attempt at following Howe's description of the dance (I have another version showing how the dance is dance now-a-days).

First lady down the centre with 2d gentleman, back, and the lady cast off, 1st gent. down the centre with 2d lady, back, and the gent. cast off, 1st four balance, half right and left, balance again, half right and left to places. — American Dancing Master

Most of this is fairly obvious, but what does "balance" mean here? It takes 4 bars, so it is a little more than the standard "set". The plain quadrille has an 8 bar "balance" and a 4 bar one. The description for the 4 bar one is "Here they all balance (or set) in a circle — eight steps — holding each other's hands (four bars)".

I assume the dance is intended to be a triple minor (even though the 3s do nothing) since Howe says "1st four balance", a direction which would not be needed in a duple minor.

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.

A11-8W1 lead M2 down, turn, come back, W1 casts off
A21-8M1 lead W2 down, turn, come back, M1 casts off
B11-41s+2s balance (form a circle balance in, out, in, out)
5-8The same couples half right and left
B21-4Balance
5-8Half right and 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 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=BeauxOfOakHill-Howe

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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.