Portland Fancy ~ Howe

Portland Fancy ~ Howe Portland Fancy ~ 48bar Portland Fancy ~ 32bar

Portland Fancy ~ Howe is an American Country Dance. It was published by Elias Howe in 1862 in American Dancing Master, Boston. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a Four Face Four dance. It is a double progression dance. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

Howe writes

Join hands and swing eight — head couple (gentleman opposite lady) down the middle, foot couple up the outside (at the same time), back to places — head couple down the outside, and foot couple up the middle — back to places — ladies chain at the head, right and left at foot, right and left at head and ladies chain at foot — all forward, forward and cross by opposite couples to face the next four.

In this context the "head couple" is defined to be the leftmost gentleman with his back to the band and his opposite (who is not his partner) in each minor set. While the foot couple is the leftmost gentleman facine the band and the woman opposite him. Similarly "heads" means the foursome stage left, and "feet" the foursome stage right.

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.

A1-8Circle eight
B11-8Heads chassé down inside, while foot couple chassé up outside
B21-8Heads chassé down outside, while foot couple chassé up inside
C11-8Heads: ladies chain, feet: right and left through, over and back
C21-8Heads: right and left through, feet: ladies chain, over and back
D1-4Lines of four forward and back
5-8Pass through two lines

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=PortlandFancy-Howe

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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
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.