Vernal Equinox
Loudly Good Spring
Vernal Equinox or Loudly Good Spring is an English Country Dance. It was devised by George Williams in 2024. It is a Custom dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 615324. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: D minor.
Gary Shapiro inspired me to write this, to explore what happens to a grand square when there are 6 couples in it. It is vaguely inspired by Winter Solstice by Wendy Crouch.
| A1+2 | 16 | 6 couple grand square |
| B1 | 4 | Partner left hand turn (ending centers facing neighbor center, outside men facing out |
| 4 | Outsides do four bars of reverse schiehallion reels, while centers right shoulder round once and a half with neighbor (end facing out) | |
| B2 | 4 | Centers with nearest head position do two changes of rights and lefts as side positions pass partner right to orbit halfway round the set |
| 4 | Partner two hand turn (centers turn once and a half, heads face in, others face partner) |
By "reverse schiehallion" I mean that the person facing out makes a loop ending up in his corner's place (facing in), and then does a small half loop into his corner's partner's place, while the person facing in does a small half loop into her partner's place and then a bigger loop into her partner's corner's place (following her partner).
Schiehallion reels normally have the big loop on the inside of the square, but that's full of people here, so I've reversed it to put the big loop on the outside.
The tune, is called Softly Good Tummas, and was published by Walsh. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album By Choice. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.
The animation plays at 111 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 dances of George Williams (including this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| A1 | 1-8 | Sides and centers face partner, grand square |
| A2 | 1-8 | (Grand square continues) Reverse |
| B1 | 1-4 | Partner left hand turn (centers end facing neighbor, outside men end facing out) |
| 5-8 | Outsides 4 bars of reverse schiehallion reel, centers right shoulder round once and a half with neighbor (end facing out) | |
| B2 | 1-4 | Centers and head positions two changes of rights and lefts and side positions pass partner right and orbit half |
| 5-8 | Partner two hand turn, centers turning once and a half and facing in |
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=VernalEquinox
The dance is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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
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.