Tea for Two
Tea for Two is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1756 in Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances, Vol. 8, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 64 bars.
May be found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library online collection: Johnson Vol. 8.
Johnson writes:
First Man foot it to the 2d. Wo. the Man cast down, the Wo. up Foot it again, the Wo. cast down and the Man up Cross over and turn the 2d. Cu. the same 1st. and 2d. Men foot it to their Partners and turn foot it sides and turn Lead down the middle one Cu. up again and cast off Right hands and Left
I shall assume that Johnson puts markers after either 4 or 8 bars.
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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1st corners set and cast as others twirl |
| 5-8 | The same two set and cast back as others twirl back | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s cross, go below, as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s two hand turn once and a half to proper | |
| A2 | 1-4 | New 1st corners set and cast as others twirl |
| 5-8 | The same set and cast back as others twirl back | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 2s cross, go below, as 1s lead up |
| 5-8 | 2s two hand turn once and a half to proper | |
| A3 | 1-4 | Set twice to partner |
| 5-8 | and two hand turn | |
| B3 | 1-4 | Set twice to neighbor |
| 5-8 | and two hand turn | |
| A4 | 1-8 | 1s lead down, turn, lead back and cast down as 2s lead up |
| B4 | 1-8 | Face partner, four changes of rights and lefts |
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=TeaForTwo
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2022 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.