La Belle Frêne

La Belle Frêne is an American Country Dance. It was devised by Hezekiah Cantelo in 1785 and published in Twenty Four American Country Dances danced by the British during their Winter Quarters at Philadelphia, New York, & Charles Town. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 40 bars.

Cantelo writes:

Hands across & back again — lead down the middle up again and cast off — set 3. & 3. Top & Bottom & hand 4. round at top — set 3. & 3. sideways — and hands round 4 at Bottom swing Partners swing Corners —

There are 4 strains of music with 8,8,16 and 8 bars each. Each is marked with repeats. I think there is a slight misprint and set 3. & 3. sideways — and hands round 4 at Bottom should be set 3. & 3. sideways and hands round 4 at Bottom —. I also assume that swing Partners swing Corners is the same as Wilson's Swing Corners because that begins with turning the partner right.

That gives up five 8 bar chunks in terms of figures, which suggests that the strains are not repeated.

La Belle Frêne translates to "The Beautiful Ash(tree)"

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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A1-41s+2s right hands across...
5-8...and left hands back
B1-81s lead down the middle, turn alone, lead back and cast down to 2nd place as 2s lead up, 1s finishing between end couples, man down woman up
C1-4Lines of three across, set twice, 1s finishing in progressed places
5-8Top couples circle left four
9-12Lines of three on the sides, set twice
13-16Bottom couples circle left four
D1-4Swing corners: Partner right, 1st corner left
5-8Partner right, 2nd corner left

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=LaBelleFrene

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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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.