The Bath

The Bath is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1651 in The English Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars. It is in the key: G Major.

Playford writes:

Lead up all forwards and back, set and turn S. That again First cu. back a D. slip into the 2. place on the outside, hands all four, and go round Do thus to the last.
Sides all, set and turn S. That again The first four meet and cross over, go half round to the right hand into each others places ·: Do thus to the last.
Arms all, set and turn S. That again The two first men meet and change places, the we. as much, then the second slip down and the first up, then the first down and the second up ·: Do thus to the last.

In Playford's day each of these sub-dances would run until everyone was back in their original place. I shall simply do them in succession.

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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

I.A11-4Up a double and back
5-8Set to partner and turn single right
I.A21-4Up a double, back (again)
5-8Set and turn single
I.A31-21s fall back a double
3-41s slip down outside as 2s slip up inside
5-8Circle left
II.A11-4Right shoulder siding
5-8Set and turn single
II.A21-4Left shoulder siding
5-8Set and turn single
II.A31-2All meet in the center and fall back
3-4Partner change
5-6Circle right half
7-8Fall back and come forward
III.A11-4Arm right
5-8Set and turn single
III.A21-4Arm left
5-8Set and turn single
III.A31-2The men hole in the wall cross
3-4The women hole in the wall cross
5-82s slip down inside as the 1s slip up outside, then 1s down inside and 2s up outside

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=TheBath

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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.