Our Happy Meeting is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1988 and published in Retreads Vol.3. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
The first Man and the second Wo. goes the whole Figure round the first Wo. and the second Man The first Wo. and the second Man do the same Then all four clap Hands with their own Partners and turn single, the the first Cu. take both Hands and Gallop down below the second Cu. The Gallop up again, cast off and Figure
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 Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
A1 | 1-8 | M1+W2 full figure 8 around the other two, starting counter-clockwise round partners and passing left shoulder |
A2 | 1-8 | W1+M2 the same (except clockwise round partner, and passing right shoulder) |
B | 1-2 | All clap with partners (together, right, together, left) |
3-4 | Turn single cloverleaf | |
5-8 | 1s slip down inside and back as 2s slip outside | |
A3 | 1-2 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up |
3-8 | 1s cross up 2s cast down full double figure eight |
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=OurHappyMeeting
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1988 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.