Burlington House ~ 3 Couple

Burlington House ~ 3 Couple Burlington House ~ Triple

Burlington House ~ 3 Couple is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1718 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, 3rd ed., London. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in about 1965 and published in Another Look at Playford. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 52 bars. It is in the key: D Minor.

Playford writes:

Note: Each Strain is to be play'd twice over.

First Man Sett to 2d Wo. and 2d Man leads thro' the two We. and cast off into their own Places The 2d Man and 1st Wo. Sett to each other, and the two We. lead thro' the two Men and cast off into their own Places The 1st Wo. goes with inside the 2d Man and cast up between the 1st Cu. and and 1st Man goes round the 3d Man, and Sett between the 3d Cu. at the same Time; then 1st Man turns the 3d Wo. and the 1st Wo. the 2d Man, then turn your own Partner Then 1st Cu goes the whole Figure of eight with the 3d Cu. and Righ and Left with the 2d Cu. quite round

Shaw has only the 1s setting in the A part, but Playford says both W1+M2 set to each other, so I'm going out on a limb and will allow the 2s to set back. Also I think they should set twice to fill up the music even through neither Playford nor Shaw says that.

Shaw is not as precise as I would like about how the music is to be distributed among the figures, there seems to be more music than the figures would normally fill. For once the 3 couple version seems to fit better than the triple minor.

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), set, cast, lead, figure eight, double figure eight, rights and lefts (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=BurlingtonHouse-3Couple

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1965 by Pat Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.