The Fast Packet

The Fast Packet is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Bob Lilley in 1987 and published in Bob Lilley's Nightmarish (and Other) Dances. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: D Major. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate.

The Fast Packet is not a packet boat carrying mail, but a modern internet packet carrying e-mail, the devisor having worked on packet switching code.

Danced with a step-hop.

The tune is a traditional one. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album A New English Ball. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 150 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), circle, poussette, back to back (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=TheFastPacket

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The dance is copyright © 1987 by Bob Lilley. 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
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.