Dunkirk

Dunkirk is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1718 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, 3rd ed., London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 2003 and published in Retreads Vol.9. Originally a Triple Minor this version 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 1st Man turns the 2d Wo. then 1st Cu. cast off Second Man turn the 1st Wo. and the 2d. Cu. Cast off The 1st Cu. take Hands and gallop down the Middle into the 2d Cu. Place, then turn single and lead thro' the 3d Cu. and cast up into the 2d Cu. Place Then lead up all four a-breast and back again, the 1st Cu. cross over and turn Hands half round into the 2d Cu. Place :

Originally a triple minor.

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 Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-41st corners right hand turn
5-81s long cast down as 2s wait and lead up
A21-4New 1st corners right hand turn
5-82s long cast down as 1s wait and lead up
B11-21s take hands, slip down as 2s without hands slip up outside them
3-4all turn to face neighbor and continue turning to next neighbor
5-8Mirror gypsy (men left, women right), 2s starting together ending in a line of four with original neighbors, 1s between 2s
B21-4Up a double and fall back
5-81s cross up, cast down and two hand turn half as 2s meet and lead up

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=Dunkirk

< Prev Top Next >

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2003 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.