The French Ambassador ~ Bolton or French Embassader ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1701 in The Dancing Master, 11th ed.. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1985 and published in Retreads Vol.1. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 48 bars.
Playford titled the dance in two ways: "French Embassader" and "The French Embassader"
Playford writes:
The 1. cu. cross over and turn below the 2. cu. Then cross over below the third cu. and turn The 1. man turns the 3. wo. and the 1. wo. the 2. man, then turn your Partner with your left-hand, then lead thorow the 3. cu. and cast up and turn, Figure thorow the 2. cu. and turn your Partner.
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 Charles Bolton (including interpretations 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 | 1-4 | 1s long cast as 2s lead up |
5-8 | 1s two hand turn | |
A2 | 1-2 | 1s cast down as 3s lead up |
3-6 | 1s two hand turn | |
7-8 | 3s cast down as 1s lead up | |
B1 | 1-4 | 1s right hand turn 1st corners |
5-8 | All left hand turn partner | |
9-12 | All face down, 3s, followed by others, cast up to invert the set | |
13-16 | All partner two hand turn | |
B2 | 1-8 | 3s cast down, 1s cross up, full double figure eight |
9-12 | Set and turn single | |
13-16 | All partner two hand turn |
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=TheFrenchAmbassador-Bolton
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1985 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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.