The Butterfly

The Butterfly is an English Country Dance. It is a traditional dance with no clear origin. It was interpreted by Cecil Sharp (website) in 1909. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

Sharp says that partners should hold a handkerchief (or two tied together) between them in their right hands. Presumably in this dance it is only for the dip and dive sequence and the rest of the time the man carries it (as in Ribbon Dance), but that isn't specified.

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.

A11-4Right hands across...
5-8... and left hands back
B1-41s make an arch, 2s duck under, then 2s make an arch and 1s duck under
5-8That again
A21-8Partner swing, half-way around the minor set, counter-clockwise to progress

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=TheButterfly

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The dance is out of copyright in the US, but I'm not sure of other jurisdictions. The interpretation is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 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.