Welcome in the May
Welcome in the May is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Sharon Green (website) in 2018. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
Having danced this I find the half double figure eight (coming out of the star left) works better if neither woman casts, and that both men do. The women simply continue in the direction they are moving. The bottom man needs to waste some time before his partner passes and might as well do a little twirl to face in the proper direction. (this last is not shown in the animation.)
We also found the cast after the lead out a little problematic, Sharon doesn't say whether to cast left, right, up, down or cloverleaf. if everyone casts up or down, then the set will shift (up or down), if everyone casts right or left then the star will start in an odd orientation and we got confused we weren't in the right places to start the half figure eight. We ended up doing a twirl in place and moving straight back following the same track we led out.
The tune, called Hal-an-Tow is a traditional one, 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 115 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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: set, turn single, cast, lead, figure eight, double figure eight, hands across (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=WelcomeInTheMay
The dance is copyright © 2018 by Sharon Green. 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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.