Oakenrod House

Oakenrod House is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Bernard Bentley in 1993 and published in The Fallibroome Garden. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 64 bars.

I cannot figure out what Bentley intends in C1

1st Couple ½ figure eight down through 2nd Couple who, on bars 3 and 4 turn down away from each other to follow the others round (2nd Woman following 1st Man, 2nd Man following 1st Woman) and go into a ½ figure eight through 1st Couple, who, on bars 7 and 8, turn upwards away from each other to follow 2nd Couple (1st Man following 2nd Man, 1st Woman following 2nd Woman) into a line of four facing up, 2nd Couple in middle of line (all are improper);

If the 2s actually follow the 1s on bar 4, then they aren't in position to figure eight up. If they end up above the 1s they might figure eight down, but they get into the middle of the line too soon and the 1s can't follow them.

I have decided that the 2s do not actually follow, they just spin round in a circle. It's not what Bentley says, and it breaks the symmetry of the dance (since the 1s do follow the 2s, but it gets everyone where they need to be.

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, figure eight, hands across, lead and cast, siding, set and turn corners, 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=OakenrodHouse

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The dance is copyright © 1993 by Bernard Bentley. 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.