The Guaracha

The Guaracha is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was published by H. D. Wilcock in about 1868 in Ball-Room Guide: A Manual of Dancing. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is an improper duple minor longways dance. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

This is a Spanish dance, published in Glasgow.

Wilcock writes:

Previous to commencing, the couples stand up, facing each other, in two lines, the ladies on one side, and the gentlemen on the other. The first and every fourth couple change sides before commencing the figure, and all begin together.

  1. All four advance and retire, and change places at the sides; advance and retire, and change places with partners. Repeat the last two movements. (16)
  2. All four join hands, balances, and each gentleman passes the lady at his left into his place. All four join hands, balances, and each gentleman passes his partner into his place. Repeat the same with lady on left, and again with partners, (16)
  3. Waltz pousette (16)

This is the first dance I have found which explicitly describes the modern way of starting a dance (all an once) rather than the traditional one (only the top couples start.

Note that although this is a duple minor, the instructions for starting are those for a triple minor. (Or, if you take them literally for a quadruple minor, but I think that's a typo).

I assume the music should be a waltz given that it includes a "waltz poussette". I've never heard of a "waltz poussette", and there is nothing in the book to describe it. It must progress, and take 16 bars. The simplest solution is just to have the two couples waltz around each other once and a half times until they have switched places.

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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

1-2All move in to center, and fall back
3-4Change with neighbor on the side
5-6All move in to center, and fall back
7-8Change with partner by left across
9-10All move in to center, and fall back
11-12Change with neighbor on the side
13-14All move in to center, and fall back
15-16Change with partner across
17-18Take hands, balance in and out
19-20Men roll neighbor away
21-22Balance the ring
23-24Men roll partner away
25-26Take hands, balance in and out
27-28Men roll neighbor away
29-30Balance the ring
31-32Men roll partner away
33-48Waltz counter clockwise around the minor set once and a half times to progressed places

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=TheGuaracha

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2022 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.