The Garter

The Garter is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1688 in A new Additional Sheet to the Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by Tom Cook in about 1980 and published in Not Quite Gold. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes

The 1. man go round on the outside of the 1. wo. into his own place, and the 2. wo. follow the 1. man into her own place, and turn S. then the 1. wo. go round on the outside of the 1. man into her own place, and the 2. man follow her into his own place, and turn S.
The 1. man and 2. wo. change places, then 1 wo. and 2. man change places, the both cu. go the half Figure and clap hands, then turn their own into their places again

It looks to me as if Playford is calling for a double half figure eight, rather than two half figure eights in sequence. But that would not fill up all the time in the B part. Unless the "clap hands" were made into a four bar sequence.

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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, turn single, cast, figure eight (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=TheGarter

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1980 by Tom Cook. 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.