The Free Mason ~ Apted

The Free Mason ~ Pat Shaw The Free Mason ~ Apted

The Free Mason ~ Apted is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1778 in Twenty four Country Dances for the year 1778, London. It was interpreted by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer in 1931 and published in The Apted Book of Country Dances. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 64 bars.

Thompson writes:
The 3d Gent: lead round the 3d. Lady the 3d. lady do the same lead down & up & Cast off Allmand Right hand and then Left Set 3 & 3 Bottom and Top and turn your partner then sides ballance 3 Cu:& turn half round ballance again & turn proper

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.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, siding (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=TheFreeMason

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1931 by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer. 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.