Pretty Nun ~ Williams

Pretty Nun ~ Williams Pretty Nun ~ Kennedy

Pretty Nun ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1726 in The Dancing Master, The Third Volume, 2nd ed., London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 20 bars.

Playford writes:

Note: The each Strain is to be play'd twice over.

The first Couple take both Hands, the second do the same and go round into each others Place The same back again Then the first Man change Places with the second Woman, then the second Man with the first Woman, and all four turn Single Then Hands across and turn quite round, then the first Couple turn Proper

I think Playford is describing a poussette in the A part. (the Kennedies disagree on this).

The only other difficulty in interpreting the original is then the first Couple turn Proper at the end. Both couples are improper at this point, so both couples must turn proper, not just the 1s. (the Kennedies agree with me on this).

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+21-8Full poussette clockwise, M1 and W2 start by pushing
B11-41st corners change, 2nd corners change
5-6All turn single
B21-4Right hands across
5-6Partner two hand turn half to proper

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=PrettyNun-Williams

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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.