Sicilian Dance
Sicilian Dance is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1982 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 1. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Wilson writes:
SINGLE FIGURE Tune played straight thro
Cast off 2 Cu: & back again cross over one Cu: half figure round the 3d. Cu: turn corners & lead outsides
OR THUSHands across with the 2d. Cu: & back again promenade 3 Cu: whole poussette & whole figure contrary corners
OR THUSCross over 2 Cu: set & change places with 3d. Cu: the double triangle & set contrary corners
Sheffield never says when the 1s become proper in B, just that they end proper. The left hand star won't make them proper, nor will the setting bofore that So they must become proper at the end of the figure eight. Which means the subsequent setting will be on the diagonal.
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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations 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.
| A | 1-4 | 1s cross, go below as 2s move up |
| 5-8 | 1s cross, go below next 2s as they move up | |
| B | 1-4 | 1s set to the couple above and change places with them, men right, women left |
| 5-8 | Circle left four with original neighbors | |
| C | 1-8 | 1s cross right, turn left (man up, lady down) and figure eight, man left shoulder around neighbor, woman left around next neighbor, then right around the other |
| D | 1-4 | M1 set twice to W2 as W1 set to next M2 |
| 5-8 | Man up, woman down, left hands across |
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=SicilianDance
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1982 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.