The Happy Meeting ~ Playford
The Happy Meeting ~ Playford is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1696 in The Second Part of the Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Playford published a dance called "The Happy Meeting" in 1696 (and Walsh republished it later).
Playford writes:
The 1 cu. go the Figure thro' the 2. cu. and then cross over above into the 2. cu. Place, the other couple do the like. This to the first Strain play'd twice Both cu. clap Hands with their Partners, the 1. cu. cast off, then Right and Left with your Partners quite round; the 2. cu. being in the 1. cu. Place, clap Hands and cast off, then Right and Left as before.
The music is in 3/2 time and there are two 8 bar strains.
If the 2. cu. being in the 1. cu. Place, clap Hands and cast off, then Right and Left as before the right and left is "as before" then the 1s will end up at the top, the 2s at the bottom and there will be no progression. So I'm going to assume that the second right and left is only three changes.
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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s half figure eight down through the 2s |
| 5-8 | 1s cross, go below as 2s lead up | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 2s half figure eight down through the 1s |
| 5-8 | 2s cross, go below as 1s lead up | |
| 9-10 | All clap right hands with partner, 1s cast down as 2s move up | |
| 11-16 | Face partner, four changes of rights and lefts | |
| 17-18 | All clap right hands with partner, 2s cast down as 1s move up | |
| 19-24 | Face partner, three changes of rights and lefts |
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=TheHappyMeeting-Playford
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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
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.