Ladies in Center Back to Back ~ Kentucky Square Dances is an Appalachian Circle Dance. It was published by Ida Levin in 1928 in Kentucky Square Dances. It is a Custom dance. It is a multipart dance. The minor set lasts 126 bars.
Ida Levin describes an early form of "square dancing" which is actually danced in a large circle. This bears some similarities to the dance which Cecil Sharp called The Running Set 10 years before.
Every "change" of a dance begins win an introduction, first Ida gives the calls for this:
- Join hands, circle left all the way around.
- Swing home
- Corners, too.
- Don't forget your partner
And then she explains what the calls mean:
(At this time "Swing" was a generic term which meant roughly: "turn in a circle", it did not mean the modern partner swing.)
This figure is a little unusual for these Kentucky Square Dances in that it does not contain a do-si-do.
Again Ida gives calls for the figure:
- Ladies in center, back to back.
- Gents shuffle to left.
- Pass your partner one, swing, place her back.
- Go on around.
- Pass your partner two, swing, place her back.
- Go on around.
- Swing home, corners too.
and meaning...
I'm not sure if Ida intends for the men to use a slipping step when they circle (that might be what "shuffle" means), or walk single file. I have chosen single file because it flows better with the right hand turns.
Cecil Sharp's version has the men turning their partners to the middle, and then going counter clockwise around the set, and he adds a promenade after each hand turn.
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.
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The dance is copyright © 1928 by Ida Levin. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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
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.