The Sea Nymphs

The Sea Nymphs is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1726 in The Dancing Master, The Third Volume, 2nd ed., London. It was interpreted by Bernard Bentley in 1980 and published in The Fallibroome Collection, Vol. 6. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

Playford writes:

Note: Each Strain twice.

The first Man cast off, and the second Woman cast up, then go the Figure of Eight thro' the other two The the second Man cast off, and the first Woman cast up and go the Figure as before The all four hands a-cross and back again then Right and Left Then lead thro' the third couple and thro' the 2d couple and turn your partner

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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), cast, lead, figure eight, hands across, rights and lefts, lead and cast (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=TheSeaNymphs

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1980 by Bernard Bentley. 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.