Vain Belinda

Vain Belinda is an English Country Dance. It was published by Wright in 1742 in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, Vol. II. It was interpreted by Andrew Shaw in about 2019 and published in The Irish Howle. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 44 bars.

I am not sure when Shaw interpreted this dance. He published in 2024 in "The Irish Howle", but I was aware of it by 2019, and others probably knew of it even earlier.

Wright writes:

Note: Each strain twice.
The 1st Man cast and Back to Back with the 2d Wo. and turn The 1st Wo. do the same with the 2d Man Then cross over and whole Figure and turn your Partner Then cross up and Right and Left

Music performed by Frank Hoppe, Robert Winokur, and Susan McNeil.

The animation plays at 106 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, double figure eight, rights and lefts (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=VainBelinda

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2019 by Andrew Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2019 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.