Bellamira ~ Bolton

Bellamira ~ Kennedy/Bolton Bellamira ~ Kennedy Bellamira ~ Bolton Bellamira ~ Hume

Bellamira ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1689 in A new Addition to the Dancing Master. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1985 and published in Retreads Vol.1. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: G minor. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate.

Playford writes:
First man take hands with his Partner and lead her down the middle, the man go on the wo. side, and the wo on the man's, then 1. man side with foot and elbow, the 2. wo. and 1. wo. side with foot and elbow the 2. man, and turn sides to their own places.
Cross over with their Partners, and go round about the 1 cu. till the 1. man comes into the 2. man's place, and the 1. wo. into the 2. wo. place, then 1. man cross over with the 2. wo. and 1. wo. with the 2. man, then all four clap hands, and hands half round and turn S.

The tune was published, by Playford, with the dance. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album More Favorites of the Boston Centre. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 113 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.

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.

A11-81s lead down, turn, lead up, wheel around (man backs) improper facing down
A21-4Sharp siding with neighbor
5-8Neighbor two hand turn
B11-4Partner hole in the wall cross, fall back
5-8M2 cast up, W2 chase, 1s lead down, end all proper, progressed
B21-22nd diagonal (original 1st corners) cross
3-41st diagonal cross
5-6Clap and circle left half
7-8All turn single 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=Bellamira-AABB

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1985 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 © 2019 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.