Short and Sweet - Bray is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Bray in 1699 and published in Country Dances: Being a Composition Entirely New. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
The tune was composed by Henry Purcell and first published by Playford. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album More Favorites of the Boston Centre. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.
The animation plays at 107 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance is 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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
A1 | 1-2 | Move into right shoulder siding |
3-4 | Cast left to places | |
A2 | 1-2 | Move into left shoulder siding |
3-4 | Cast right to places | |
B1 | 1-2 | 1s cross and lead up |
3-4 | Cast away from each other to meet 2s | |
5-8 | Mirror turn neighbors, M1+W2 right, W1+M2 left | |
B2 | 1-4 | Neighbor mirror back to back, M1+W2 right, W1+M2 left |
5-8 | 1s cross, go below, as 2s lead up and turn out |
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.
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. 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 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.