Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1679 in ?A Suplement to the Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in 1966 and published in Another Look at Playford. Found in The Playford Assembly. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 28 bars.

Playford writes:

Honour to the Presence, then to your we. Lead up all forward and back, that again.
First cu. lead up, and the 2. cu. lead down, then change hands and meet, then the two men take hands, and likewise the two we. take hands, and lead to the wall and back again, then the 1. man and 2. wo. change places, and then stand still till the 1. wo. and 2. man do the like, then the two men take hands and also the two we. take hands and fall back from each other, then meet and cross over with your own wo. then 1. man and 2. we. meet and turn back to back, and then stand still till the 1. wo. and 2. man do the same, then all four clap hands and turn S. and take hands in a ring and go quite round. Do the same over again to the last.

The tune was published by Playford with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume.

The animation plays at 109 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), turn single, circle, 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.

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=ValentinesDay

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1966 by Pat Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 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.