Diamond Hall

Diamond Hall is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, London. It was interpreted by Fried de Metz Herman (website) in 2009 and published in Serendipity. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes

Note: Each Strain is to be play'd twice over.
The first Man, and first and 2d Wo. take Hands and go a whole round to their Places Then go Right-hands a-cross half round, and turn S. then Right and Left to your own Places Then the 1st Cu. crosses over at Top and comes between the 2d Cu. and lead up all four a-breast and bek again The first Cu. cast up to the Top then all four clap Hands, the 1st Cu. casts off into the 2d Cu. Place

Fried credits this dance to Walsh, but it is one of many he stole from John Young (Playford).

I assume that Fried's instrutions about clapping on the diagonal mean to go outside the minor set. Something unusual in traditional Country Dances (and not specified by Playford or Walsh).

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 dance contains the following figures: set, turn single, cast, lead, hands across, rights and lefts, cross go below (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=DiamondHall

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2009 by Fried de Metz Herman. 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.