Ely Minster ~ Bolton

Ely Minster ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1698 in The Dancing Master, 10th ed.. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 2003 and published in Retreads Vol.9. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

Playford writes:
First man go without side the 2. wo. up the middle into his wo. place; 1. wo. at the same time go within side, round the 2. man, up into her man's place; the 2. cu. doing the same: men being on the we. side, 1. cu. slips down into the 2. cu. place, right and left into their own places, men on the we. side; 1. man cross over with the 2. wo. and 2. man cross over with the 1. wo. so turn your own.

Note: Each Strain is to be play'd twice over.

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.

A11-81s cross and face down, they dance down in parallel (man ouside set, woman in middle) clockwise around opposite returning to improper places
A21-82s cross and face up, they dance up in parallel (man in middle, woman outside) clockwise around opposite return to improper places
B11-41s, giving hands chassé down and back up, while 2s outside and without hands chassé up and down
5-81s long cast down as 2s lead up
9-12Facing partner two changes of rights and lefts
13-16Partner cross by right and loop right to face in
B21-4Set in to the center, acknowledge and turn single back
5-8M1+W2 set and hole in the wall cross
9-12W1+M2 set and hole in the wall cross
13-16All two hand turn partner

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=ElyMinster

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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.