The Disbanded Officer ~ Sheffield
The Disbanded Officer ~ Sheffield is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thompshon in 1787 and published in Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, Vol 5. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1985 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 3. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Thompson writes:
Lead down 2 Cu: and ballance Allemand Up again and ballance Allemand The 3 1st. Cus. ballance all round Cast off. Right and Left
Sheffield seems to have made up most of his adaptation without reference to the original.
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 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 | 1-2 | 1s cross ending improper between 2s in a line of four |
| 3-4 | Line of four lead down | |
| 5-6 | Line of four set | |
| 7-8 | 2s gate the 1s down then up three quarters, end 1s improper, above 2s all facing up | |
| A2 | 1-2 | All lead up (in couples) |
| 3-4 | and set | |
| 5-8 | Partner two hand turn to proper | |
| B1 | 1-4 | Circle left... |
| 5-8 | ...and back to the right | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1st corners change, 2nd corners change |
| 5-8 | Face neighbor, three changes of a circular hey (no hands) |
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=TheDisbandedOfficer-Sheffield
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1985 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 © 2023 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
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.