Bouzer Castle

Bouzer Castle is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1679 in The Dancing Master, 6th ed., London. It was interpreted by Bernard Bentley in 1980 and published in The Fallibroome Collection, Vol. 6. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. It is a multipart dance. The minor set lasts 144 bars. It is in the key: C Major.

Playford writes:
Honour to the Presence, then to your we. Lead up all forward and back; that again.
Then the 1. man cast off into the 2. wo. place, and the 2. wo. into the 1. man's place, and the 2 man do the same into the 1. wo. place, then the 1. cu. being in the 2. cu. place, go the Figure of 8. and the 2. cu. being in the 1. cu. place do the same, then hands round and turn S.
Then the we. take right-hands, and the men right-hands, and change places, then change places with your own, the 2. cu. being in the 1. cu. place cast off, the other lead up in the middle, and cast off into the 2. cu. place and meet, then cast off into their own places again, and so lead down into the 2. place. Do this to the end.

Should it be pronounced "boozer" or "bowzer" ... or something else?

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.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), turn single, circle, cast, lead, figure eight, rights and lefts, cast and lead, lead and cast (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=BouzerCastle

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1980 by Bernard Bentley. 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.