C'Est L'Amour ~ Williams

The Flirt ~ Williams

C'Est L'Amour ~ Williams C'Est L'Amour ~ RSCDS

C'Est L'Amour ~ Williams or The Flirt ~ Williams is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was published by Lowe in about 1831 in Lowes' Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, Edinburgh. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

The Lowes write:

The first Lady makes a chassé round, and sets between the second and third Ladies; she does the same again, and sets betwixt the third and fourth Ladies; she repeats the same turning up behind the Ladies to her place; and when she commences dancing up, her partner dances down behind the Gentlemen with the same steps; the Gentleman finishes betwixt the third couple, and goes three hands round with them; whilst his partner does the same with the second, they pass through below the hands, and meet in the middle, and pousette with the second couple.

The instructions mention the fourth couple, which is rare. Might this be a quadruple minor? (Kyneston devised a few around 1720, so it is possible but very unlikely) but the 4th lady doesn't do anything, nor do the 1s go below her, so it's more likely that Lowe is just following the 19th century's convention of having a neutral couple between every triplet. Ignoring that one phrase the rest of the dance seems like a normal triple minor.

I'm not sure what is meant by a chassé round American Square Dancing used to have a "chassé" call which was a bit like a mad robin, and still retains a "half chassé" which has dancers changing places with a chassé step. Since W1 needs to end up below W2 I shall assume they do something like a half chassé.

Now W1 is supposed to be a flirt. So having her end up between 2nd and 3rd place doesn't make much sense. If she ends up in W2's place (with W2 moving up) then she gets to set (flirt) with M2, and she is between the second and third Ladies.

I find she repeats the same turning up behind the Ladies to her place confusing. If she's "repeating the same, then she isn't going up, nor do I see how she can be both turning and chasséing. So I'm going to ignore the bit I don't understand and just move her where she needs to go, which is between the 2s, and the 3rd woman needs to move down.

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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

1-2W1 chassé outside as W2 twirls up
3-4W1 sets to M2
5-6W1 chassé outside as W3 twirls up
7-8W1 sets to M3
9-12M1 chassés down ending between the 3s (a bit below), as W1 chassés up ending between 2s (W3 moves down, M2 moves up)
13-16M1+3s, W1+2s circle three, after a full turn, the 1s duck under the joined arms of the end couples to meet in the middle
17-241s+2s full poussette clockwise, W1+M2 push

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=CestLAmour-Williams

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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.