La Favourite de la Reine

La Favourite de la Reine is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Matthew Welch in 1767 and published in Variety of English Country Dances for the Present Year. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in about 1965 and published in Another Look at Playford. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Welch provides diagrams (not shown here, see Another Look at Playford.) and the following notes:

  1. Half Right and Left
  2. back again.
  3. Cast of one Cu: cross over and Hey on your own sides.
  4. Foot it 3 abreast Back to Back.
  5. Turn to your own places.
  6. Right hands across with the Bottom Cu:
  7. Right and Left at top.

Pat Shaw describes a "half right and left à la Wilson" as: 1st corners cross by right with hands and turn right to face back, then 2nd corners cross by left with hands and turn left.

Pat does not indicate where the 2s move up. but they must have done so by the start of B2. The diagrams indicate they do so at the start of B1 when the 1s cross. So the 1s cross to between the other couples.

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: hand turn (allemande), set, 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=LaFavouriteDeLaReine

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1965 by Pat Shaw. 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.