Sun Assembly

Sun Assembly is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in about 1757 in Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, Vol I, London. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1982 and published in From Two Barns, Vol. 1st. Found in The Playford Ball. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: A major.

Thompson writes:

First and 2d. Cu Hands all 4 circle half round and back again Cross over half figure and foot it and turn 1st. Cu. Hands round with the 3d. Cu. and then with the 2d. lead thro' the 2d. Cu. cast off and turn your Partner

Sheffield attributes this dance to Thompson, 1757, but it appears earlier in Johnson, 1751 A Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, Vol 6th

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 113 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 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.

A1-2Circle left half
3-4Fall back with neighbor (only a little)
5-82s gate the 1s up
9-121s half figure-8 up through 2s as 2s cross
13-16Set and turn single
B1-41s look down, 2s up, right hand star
5-81s look up, 2s down, left hand star
9-121s lead down, cast around 2s below, back home
13-16Partner two hand turn

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=SunAssembly

< Prev Top Next >

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 © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.