New Century Hornpipe is an American Country Dance. It was published by Saltator in 1802 in A Treatise on Dancing, Boston. It was interpreted by Smukler & Millstone in about 2008. Found in Cracking Chestnuts. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Saltator writes (in 1802):
First couple down the outside below the third couple, up in the middle, moulinet four half round, back, pass down the middle, up brise, right and left a top.
A "moulinet" is a hands-across star. I think "brise" must mean cast.
Howe writes:
First couple balance, swing once and a half round — ladies chain — first couple balance again and swing once and a half round to place — right and left four.
In Howe's day the word "swing" seems to mean circle, or turn. As far as I can tell he never means a modern swing.
Cracking Chestnuts describes B2 as "Right and left through over and back", but Howe says "Right and left four" which makes more sense in a proper dance.
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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, ladies chain (courtesy turn) (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=NewCenturyHornpipe
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2008 by Smukler & Millstone. 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
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.