The Brick Makers
The Brickmakers
The Brick Makers or The Brickmakers is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in 1752 in Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances, Vol. 8, London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1986 and published in Retreads Vol.2. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 48 bars.
Johnson writes:
Foot it and half right and Left the same back again Cross over two Cu. Lead up to the Top, cast off 4 hands round at Bottom. Right and Left at Top
Originally a proper triple minor 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.
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.
| A1 | 1-4 | Foot it (Set twice, or ad lib) |
| 5-8 | Top couples two changes of rights and lefts, as bottom couple two hand turn | |
| A2 | 1-4 | Foot it |
| 5-8 | Bottom couples two changes of rights and lefts, as top couple two hand turn | |
| B1 | 1-8 | 1s cross by right to middle then cross by left to top (other couples moving down as appropriate) |
| 9-12 | 1s lead below bottom as other couples face, set forward and change | |
| 13-16 | 1s long cast to middle as others face partner, set forward and change by left | |
| B2 | 1-4 | Bottom couples circle left as top right hand turn |
| 5-8 | Bottom couples circle right as top left hand turn | |
| 9-16 | Top couples rights and left as bottom right, then left hand turn |
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=TheBrickMakers
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1986 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 © 2021 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
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.