Prince George's Birthday

Prince George's Birthday is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, London. It was interpreted by Fried de Metz Herman (website) in 1990 and published in The Road to Ruin. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: G minor.

Playford writes:
Sett all Four and turn single, then first Man and 2d Woman change Places and go half round The other Couple do the same Then the two Men clap twice Sides, and once to their Partners, and turn all Four single, then Right and Left quite round Then the first Couple, being at the Top, the Man takes his Partner and leads her down between the second Couple, and back again, then cast off and lead through the third Couple, and cast up and turn

Originally a triple minor in which the 3s did nothing.

The tune was published with the dance. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Favorites of the Boston Centre. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 102 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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, turn single cloverleaf, cast, lead, rights and lefts, down the middle and 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=PrinceGeorgesBirthday

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1990 by Fried de Metz Herman. 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.