Mi-Carême

Mi-Carême is an English Country Dance. It was devised by John Essex in 1710 and published in For the Further Improvement of Dancing, London. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in about 1965 and published in Another Look at Playford. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

Pat does not provide a date for his interpretation. Presumably sometime in the 1960s or 70s.

Essex describes this dance with diagrams which I shall not reproduce, you may find them on page 31 (and following) of For the Further Improvement of Dancing.

Carême is French for Lent, and Mi-Carême is a festival in the middle of lent.


Rigadoon: Feet together, swing right foot out to side toe pointing down, swing left foot out to side toe pointing down, feet together - jump hop on each step - even beats (quoted from Pat Shaw)

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, 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=Micareme

< Prev Top Next >

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1965 by Pat Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.