May Fair

Grief Alamode

May Fair or Grief Alamode is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1703 in The Dancing Master, 12th ed., London. It was interpreted by Fried de Metz Herman (website) in 2009 and published in Serendipity. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 30 bars.

Playford writes:

The first Man cast off, the second Woman follow him quite round to their own Places; the second Woman cast up, the Man following her round to their own Places; then the first Couple lead through and cast up; then Right-hand and Left, till the first Couple comes into the second Couple's Places.

If three changes of rights and lefts is too difficult for 3 bars, subsitute a circular hey with no hands.

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, turn single, cast, lead, rights and lefts, lead and cast (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=MayFair-Playford

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2009 by Fried de Metz Herman. 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.