The Convention

The Convention is . It was published by John Griffiths in 1794 in A Collection of the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances, Norwich, CT. It was interpreted by James E. Morrison in 1976 and published in Twenty Four Early American Country Dances, Cotillions & Reels for the Year 1976. It is a Square dance. There is no progression in this dance. The dance lasts 640 bars.

Griffiths writes:

All round, first and opposite couples, balance in the middle, set and turn contrary partners, and retreat to your places, the other two couples do the same, chasse all eight and turn the lady to your right quite round chasse back to your places and turn the lady to your left, then form two lines long way four each side balance, cross hands four, each corners, balance again, and cross hands back, and come to your former places.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, hands across, 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=TheConvention

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1976 by James E. Morrison. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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.