Maggie's Waltz Square

Maggie's Waltz Square is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Colin Hume (website) in 2002 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a Square dance. In this dance the men are permuted by: 1234 and the women by: 2341. It is a mixer. The minor set lasts 128 bars. Someone thought this dance was Easy / Intermediate.

This dance follows the rules of modern square dancing, that is, the women progress and the men retain the same home spot. In the first half of the dance the heads are active, in the second the sides. Once you have swung (in this case two hand turned) someone they become your new partner. So once you have two-hand turned your corner s/he is your partner and your new corner is someone else.

You need to waltz 7/8s of the way around the set in 8 bars, if you find that you run out of time then move closer to the center of the set so you have a smaller circle to waltz around.

People also got confused in the meanwhile figure, which is hard to call at dance-tempo. It's also confusing in that the roles change half-way through (callers, make sure the sides get a good walk through). It's easy enough when walked through slowly with time to describe everything. So:
1a) Current heads (who were originally sides) lead the person you just two-hand turned into the center
1b) while the current sides set
2a) heads turn your back on this person, take hands (right in right is best if you can manage it) with the other opposite sex person (your original partner) and lead out to a side position
2b) while the sides cast to the nearest head position.
At the end of this everyone should be where they started with their original partner. (and half-way through the role of the sides and heads reverses and the sides lead in as the heads set)

Music composed by Colin Hume, and performed by Frank Hoppe, Robert Winokur, and Susan McNeil.

The tune composed by Colin Hume for the dance. It performed by Frank Hoppe, Robert Winokur, and Susan McNeil.

The animation plays at 117 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, box the gnat, waltz, back to back (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=MaggiesWaltzSquare

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The dance is copyright © 2002 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2019 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.