Les Mariniers

This dance appears to be a variant of Playford's Row Well, Ye Mariners. Dezais's book describes dances using Feuillet diagrams, which I shall not reproduce here, Colin Hume has images of them on his siding page.

Playford writes:

Lead up a D. forwards and back That again First man two slips cross the Room one way, the woman the other Back again to your places Fall back both Meet again Clap both your own hands, then clap each other's right-hands against one another's; clap both your own hands again, then clap left-hands, then clap both hands again, then clap your breasts, then meet both your hands against one-another The same again, only clap left-hands first

First man sides with the next wo. and his wo. with the next man, doing the like till you come to your own places, the rest following and doing the same.

From the Sloane manuscript (where it is also called simply "The Marriners"):

They first Lead up: they slide alonge one before the other to one side and then turne Backes, then faces againe. and then clap hands. first their owne together, then right hands: then their owne againe then left hands. then their owne againe; then their Thighs: and with both hands the both hands of the other:
The man pass'es to the next Woman, et e Con verso; and after Sides to one another slide as before. &C

The tune was published by Dezais with his version of the dance put it is similar to Playford's tune "Row Well, Ye Mariners". The music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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), turn single, gypsy (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=LesMariniers

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2025 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.