St. James's Beauties

St. James's Beauties is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1750 in Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances, Vol. 8, London. It was interpreted by Bernard Bentley in 1968 and published in The Fallibroome Collection, Vol. 3. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 48 bars.

May be found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library online collection: Johnson Vol. 8.

Johnson writes:

First Man turn Right hands single with the 2d. Wo. and Left with his Partner 1st. Wo. the same with the 2d. Man cross over two Cu. lead to the top and cast off Hey top and Bottom 1st. Cu. change Places and hey again top and Bottom Right and Left at top

Originally a proper triple minor dance.

The choreography in the A part is the same as Rakes of Rochester. Even though Bentley's version is historically accurate, I suspect Simons's interpretation would be more fun in this dance too.

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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), cast, lead, hey, hey for three, rights and lefts (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=StJamessBeauties

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1968 by Bernard Bentley. 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.