Sunset Limited

Sunset Limited is a New England Contra Dance. It was devised by Rick Mohr in 2007. It is a Becket CCW dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate.

The hardest (that is most unexpected) part of this dance is the progression where the couples are on the "wrong" side with the gents on the left and ladies on the right, from the give and take into the circle. Rick says:

For some dancers the B2 progression feels odd at first because their partner is on the "wrong" side. I start by teaching the progression—get in Becket formation, trade places with your partner, and shift left to be in front of another couple. Assure the gents it's correct to have their partner in their left hand. Assure the ladies it's correct to have their partner in their right hand. Now shift right and circle right with your original neighbors.

Rick also suggests the the allemandes be a little tighter than usual (they are on the fast side).

Amtrak's Sunset Limited is the train which runs from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

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), gypsy, circle, lead, swing (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=SunsetLimited

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The dance is copyright © 2007 by Rick Mohr. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2019 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.