The Machine without Horses ~ Rutherford

The Machine without Horses ~ Rutherford The Machine without Horses

The Machine without Horses ~ Rutherford is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Rutherford in 1772 in Twelve Selected Country Dances for the Year 1772, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Rutherford writes:
The 1st. Cu. cast off one Cu. right hands across with the 3d. Cu cast up and left hands across with the 2d. Cu. lead down between the 3d. Cu. the 2d. Cu. follows cast up into your own places cross over one Cu. right & left

Everything except B2 is pretty clear: cross over one Cu. right & left, everyone starts B2 in their proper places, when the 1s cross and go below they become improper, to become proper again they must face their neighbors and do three changes of R+L. But this means the 2s must also be improper after the cross go below, and Rutherford doesn't suggest any way for them to get there. So I have inserted a two hand turn half. Putting in a cross after the lead up would work as well.

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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-41s long cast down as 2s lead up
5-8Right hands across with 3s
A21-41s long cast up as 2s lead down
5-8Left hands across with 2s
B11-81s followed by 2s lead below 3s, cast up to their original places
B21-41s cross, go below as 2s two hand turn half and lead up
5-81s+2s face neighbor, 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=TheMachineWithoutHorses

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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.