Black and Grey

Black and Gray

Black and Grey or Black and Gray is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1686 in The Dancing Master, 7th ed., London. It was interpreted by Andrew Shaw in 2009 and published in Farnicle Huggy. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: A Minor.

Playford writes:
The 1. and 2. cu. take hands and go quite round and cast off, then the 2. and 3. cu. take hands and go quite round and cast off, the 1 cu. being now in the 3. cu. place, the 1. man turn the 3. wo. and the 1. wo. turn the 3. man with right hand at the same time, then each turn their own with the left, then the 1. man turn the 2. wo. and the 1. wo. turn the 2. man with the right hand, and then turn their own with the left, till they are in their places.

The tune was published by Playford with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

The animation plays at 111 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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), circle, cast, lead (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=BlackAndGray

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2009 by Andrew Shaw. 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.