The Pursuit

The Pursuit is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, London. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in 1961 and published in Another Look at Playford. Found in The Playford Assembly. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: E minor.

Playford writes:

Note: Each Strain is to be Play'd twice over.

The first Man go the Hey with the two first Women, and cast off into the second Man's Place. This to the first Strain play'd once. The first Woman go the Hey with the two first Men, and cast off into the second Woman's Place. This to the first Strain play'd twice. The first Couple lead thro' the third Couple, and cast up into the second Couple's Place, and turn Hands This to the second Strain play'd once. Then do the whole Figure thro' the second Couple which will bring the first Couple into the second Couple's places. This to the second Strain play'd twice.

Bare Necessities says that this music is for Epsom New Wells (also published by Playford), but the dance I know of that name does not work with this music. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Favorites of the Boston Centre. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 100 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.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), cast, lead, figure eight, hey, cast and lead (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=ThePursuit

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1961 by Pat Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 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.