The Prince's Favourite

Savage Dance

The Prince's Favourite or Savage Dance is an English Country Dance. It was published by Dale in about 1800 in Dale's Selection of the most favorite Country Dances, Reels, &tc., London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2020 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. Someone thought this dance was Easy.

Dale writes:

The first Cu: sett to the second Lady and hands three round; the same to the Gent: Lead down the middle, up again, cast off and Allemand.

Colin Hume attributes this to Dale's Selection of the most favorite Country Dances, Reels, &tc. but the choreography is the same as Savage Dance from 10 Favourite Cotillions, 8 Country Dances and 2 Minuets for 1784 by Francis Werner. (Found on the regency dance site. The Austen family had a copy of this dance (mostly we do not know which specific dances Jane Austen might have danced).

The tune was published with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume.

The animation plays at 113 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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: set, circle, cast, lead, lead and cast, regency allemande, down the middle and back (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=ThePrincesFavourite

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2020 by Colin Hume. 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.