Clutha ~ Hughes
Clutha ~ Hughes is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Kate Hughes in about 1867 and published in Kate Hughes's Dancing Book, Dundalk, Ireland. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 56 bars.
- Top couple swing in the centre (8)
- Cast a couple and swing (8)
- Balance four in line with second couple and turn opposite partners (8)
- Rights and lefts (8)
- Set and turn opposite partners (8)
- Half chasie and swing out time (8)
- Pousette (8)
In 1811 Wilson defines swing your partner as a right hand turn. In 1909 Sharp defines swing as "engage in waltz fashion, and dance around in a small circle", basically the swing of a square or contra dance. Kate's book is halfway between those two very different definitions. Eight bars is a long time to do a hand turn (unless you do it twice or more), but it's about right for a modern partner swing.
Kate (or at least Kate's transcriber) says that this dance takes 56 bars. Which is unusual. A 48 bar dance is much more likely. Perhaps if the first two figures above were conflated: 2 bars for a right turn, 2 bars to cast 4 bars to swing up between the 2s... Or you could leave out the poussette...
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.
| 1-8 | 1s right hand turn twice |
| 9-12 | 1s long cast down as 2s lead up |
| 13-16 | 1s left hand turn once and a half spiraling up to between 2s |
| 17-20 | Balance in line twice |
| 21-24 | Neighbor right hand turn, ending with 1s in 2nd place improper |
| 25-32 | Face neighbor, four changes of rights and lefts |
| 33-36 | Face neighbor, set twice |
| 37-40 | Neighbor two hand turn |
| 41-42 | 1s half sashy (facing neighbor, cross the set to proper, man inside, lady outside) |
| 43-48 | 1s right hand turn twice (or whatever fits the music best) |
| 49-56 | 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=Clutha-Hughes
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
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.