The Rainbow ~ Sheffield

The Rainbow ~ Sheffield The Rainbow ~ Williams

The Rainbow ~ Sheffield is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1774 in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1774, London. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1983 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 2. Originally proper this version is an improper duple minor longways dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

Sheffield found this dance in Thompson's Compleat Collection, Vol. 4 from 1780, but it first appears some years earlier in one of the Thompson annuals.

Thompson writes:

Set & change sides back again hands six half round & back again lead down one Cu. Right & Left at top

I don't understand what Sheffield is doing in the A music. The A strain is 4 bars, and Thompson describes a figure that takes 4 bars. Sheffield throws in a turn single, which means he's trying to fit 6 bars of movement into 4 bars of music. I suggest the turn single be omitted.

Thompson clearly indicates the the B music is to be played twice, but Sheffield only has it played once. Again I don't see how he intends all the movement is to fit into 8 bars...

The instruction: "1s cast down and up into 2nd place..." seems very odd too.

Maybe Sheffield intends it to be played at 4 counts per measure, but Thompson seems to have expected 2 counts per measure.

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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-4Set to neighbor, turn single, and cross, W1+M2 making an arch, others dip through
A21-4Set to neighbor, turn single, and cross, M1+W2 making an arch, others dip through
B1-2Right hands across half...
3-4...and left hands back
5-61s lead down and up to 2nd place as 2s cast up
7-7Men change left, then women change right
8-8Men change left, then women change right

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=TheRainbow-Sheffield

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1983 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.