Cupid's Garden

Cupid's Garden ~ Bolton Cupid's Garden

Cupid's Garden is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1688 in The Dancing Master, 7th ed., London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2020 and published in Colin Hume's Website. 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 32 bars. Someone thought this dance was Easy / Intermediate.

Playford writes:
The 1. man go the Hey between the 2. and 3. man into the 4. man's place, then the 1. wo do the same as the 1. man did, then 1. man back to back with his own wo. and cast up into the 2. place, then 1. man cross over into the 2. wo. place, and 2 wo. at the same time cross over into the 1. man's place, then meet and set, and cast off into the 2. cu. place, then go the half Figure into the 2. cu. place, and so turn their own; the rest doing the like.

Originally a triple minor.

The tune was published with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

The animation plays at 111 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, cast, lead, figure eight, back to back (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=CupidsGarden

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2020 by Colin Hume. 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.

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.