Lady of the Lake

Lady of the Lake is a New England Contra Dance. It was published by Elias Howe in 1858 in Complete Ball-Room Hand Book. It was interpreted by Smukler & Millstone in about 2008. Found in Cracking Chestnuts. It is an improper duple minor longways dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Howe's version of the dance is an improper triple minor (where the 3s do nothing), and the dancers do not swing they two hand turn. Because of this neighbors do not change places before the cast. Also Howe has both couples balance and turning their partners in A2, rather than just the 1s.

Howe writes:

(Music: Miller's Frolic.)

First couple change places before commencing to dance. First couple balance to second couple, turn — first four balance to partners, turn — down the centre, back and cast off — ladies chain.

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: cast, ladies chain (courtesy turn), swing (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=LadyOfTheLake

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2008 by Smukler & Millstone. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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.