Tunbridge Beauties ~ Ottawa
Tunbridge Beauties ~ Ottawa is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710. It was interpreted by Ottawa in about 2019. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: G minor.
Playford writes:
The first Man Setts to his own, then crosses over with the 2d Woman, then the first Man and 2d Woman Sett, and cross over and change Places; then the first and second Men take Hands and lead between the first and second Women, and come into their Places again, then all Four clap and take Hands, and go half round into their own Places again, the the first and second Woman tank Hands and lead between the first and second Men into their own Places again; then all Four Clap and take Hands, and go half round into their own Places again, the rest doing the same.
The music consists of two 8 bar strains, repeated.
The first problem I have with this description is and come into their Places again, then all Four clap and take Hands, and go half round into their own Places again. Doing a half circle starting from places will not end in places.
The next problem is that the figures described take up 20 bars of music and we've got 32 to fill up.
The final problem is that there is no indication of how the dancers become proper.
Walsh also has a version of this dance in his Compleat Country Dancing-Master but as he copies Playford word for word this is not helpful.
This version of the dance was found on the Ottawa English Dance site with a comment that it was last modified in 2019 by nashjc. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license.
The tune was published with the dance by Playford (John Young), It was performed by the Odd Sundays Garage Band (Judy Linsenberg, Shira Kammen and Patti Cobb). The music is used with permission from the Odd Sundays Garage Band.
The animation plays at 106 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance is 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: set, circle, cast, 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.
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2019 by Ottawa. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021,2022 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.