Blue Bonnets ~ RSCDS

Blue Bonnets are over the Border ~ RSCDS

Blue Bonnets over the Border ~ RSCDS

Blue Bonnets over the Border Blue Bonnets ~ RSCDS

Blue Bonnets ~ RSCDS or Blue Bonnets are over the Border ~ RSCDS is a Scottish Country Dance. It was published by Goulding & D'Almaine in 1827 in Goulding & D'Almaine's Twenty-four Country Dances for the Year 1827. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1926 and published in RSCDS Book 3. It is J8×32 2C/4C, a proper Duple Minor dance. J32.

The RSCDS attributes this to Mozart Allan's Allan's Reference Guide to the Ball-Room, Glasgow, ~1895, and a dance with this name and figure is in that work, but it occurred elsewhere earlier.

Published by Goulding & D'Almaine in 1827 as Blue Bonnets are over the Border. I do not have access to the original text. but Robert Keller gives the figures as:
Change sides
Change sides (again)
Lead down and back
Poussette


Smyth, in 1830, page 31, calls it Blue Bonnets Over the Border and writes:

First Lady and second Genlemen advance and retire, and pass back to back, the first Gentleman and second Lady the same Down the middle and up again, and poussette.

So where is the progression in this dance? Either in the poussette or in "down the middle and up again". If you look at Mrs McLeod (page 33) you will see that, for Smyth, "down the middle and up again" is progressive.

Smyth (an Edinburgh dancing teacher) classifies this as a "Scotch Country Dance".

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.

1-8L1+M2 advance and retire, do-si-do
9-16M1+L2 advance and retire, do-si-do
17-241s lead down the middle and back
25-321s+2s poussette

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=BlueBonnets

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is out of copyright in the US, but I'm not sure of other jurisdictions. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2019 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.