Miss Nancy Frowns ~ Johnson

Miss Nancy Frowns ~ Johnson Miss Nancy Frowns ~ RSCDS

Miss Nancy Frowns ~ Johnson is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1752, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 40 bars.

May be found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library online collection: Johnson Vol. 8.

Johnson writes:

First and 2d. Cu. foot Partners then foot sideways Cross over 2 Cu. Lead up to the Top and cast off the Man whole figure at Bottom and Wo. the same at top at the same time Hands across at Bottom Right and Left at Top

The original music consists of a 4 bar A strain and an 8 bar B strain. The A music appears to be repeated twice, the B 4 times (which is kind of weird so I may have it wrong).

Johnson's book is undated, Robert Keller provides 1752 as a date. The RSCDS attributes this dance to Thompson, 1755, but Johnson probably published the figure (the same words even) earlier.

The RSCDS has changed Cross over 2 Cu. Lead up to the Top and cast off (which means, 1s cross by right, go below 2s, cross by left, go below 3s, then lead up and cast down) into a weaving pattern through the other couples which catches the spirit of the movement if not the exact nature of it.

They also changed the figure of eights into reels, which basically follow the same tracks for the 1s but give the others something to do.

Finally they have changed Right and Left at Top to a "left hands across". The right and left would have needed to fit into four bars, instead of the normal 8, and 70% of the time Johnson follows a right hands across with a left hands back, so RSCDS may be right to consider this a misprint.

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 dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

A11-41s+2s set twice to partner
A21-41s+2s set twice to neighbor
B11-81s cross, go below 2s, cross again go below 3s
B21-81s lead to top and cast down as 2s lead up
B31-81s pass 1st corners left to whole figure eight through (different) end couples
B41-41s+3s right hands across
5-81s+2s face partner, four changes of a circular hey

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=MissNancyFrowns-Johnson

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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.