Whitney's Farewell

Whitney's Farewell is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1695 in The Dancing Master, 9th ed., London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2021 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes:

The 1. man turn the 2. wo. with his right-hand, and then turn his own Partner with his left; then 1. wo. turn the 2. man with her right-hand, and then turn her own Partner with her left The 1. cu. lead through the 2. cu. anc cast up, the 2. cu. lead through the 1. cup and cast off, the two men take hands and fall back, the two we. do the like at the same time, then all four meet and clap hands with your Partners, and then the 1. cu. cast off.

Graham Christian has written an article on this dance for the CDSS News. Whitney was a highway man, and his "farewell" was his hanging.

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

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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), cast, lead, lead and cast (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=WhitneysFarewell

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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.