The Romp
The Romp is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1787 in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1787. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1995 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 7. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Thompson writes:
The 1st. 2d. & 3d. Gentn. take hands & go round their Parts. the Ladies do the same the 1st. Cu. go round with the Allmand till they come in their places again the 2d & 3d Cu.s follows cross over and right and Left
Wright published an earlier dance with this name but a different figure and different music.
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.
| A1 | 1-8 | Men take hands set left and right, M1 leads them round the women back to places |
| A2 | 1-8 | Women take hands set right and left, W1 leads them round the men back to places |
| B1 | 1-2 | 1s+2s right hands across half |
| 3-4 | 1s+3s left hands across half | |
| 5-6 | 2s+3s right hands across half | |
| 7-8 | 1s lead up (to 2nd place), 2s cast down, 3s turn single left | |
| B2 | 1-2 | On the right diagonal change by right (within minor set) |
| 3-4 | On the left diagonal change by left (within minor set) | |
| 5-6 | On the right diagonal change by right (within minor set) | |
| 7-8 | Turn single left |
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=TheRomp-Thompson
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 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 © 2021-2025 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.