Catching of Fleas

Catching of Fleas is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1670 in The Dancing Master, 4th ed., London. It was interpreted by Cecil Sharp (website) in 1912 and published in The Country Dance Book (Part 3). It is a proper Duple Minor dance. It is a USA dance. The minor set lasts 144 bars. It is in the key: F Major.

This dance has three small duple minor dances inside it, punctuated by the usual "Up a double"/"Siding"/"Arming". When specifying how many times these subdances should repeat Playford writes "These Changes to the last", which I take to mean "until the set has inverted".

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.

Up a double

A	1-4	Up a Double, and back
	5-8	That again

Part 1 repeats 5 times

B	1-4	1s fall back, come forward, take hands and change by the right
	5-8	1s slip down and change places as 2s move up outside

Siding

1-4	Right Siding
5-8	Left Siding

Part 2 repeats 5 times

B	1-2	1s cross down as 2s move up
	3-4	1s change
	5-8	2s followed by 1s cast down back to places

Arming

A1	1-4	Right Arming
A2	1-4	Left Arming

Part 3 repeats 5 times

B	1-4	1s cast below 2s and lead up to places
	5-6	1s slip down inside as 2s move up outside
	7-8	1s turn single down

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=CatchingOfFleas

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. 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.

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.