Hey is for Humpbacks

Hey is for Humpbacks is a New England Contra Dance. It was devised by George Williams in 2019. It is a Four Face Four dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

This dance was inspired when Jacqui Grennan wondered if it were possible to rewrite the Scottish Country Dance John Cass into an English Country Dance. Basically that means removing the footwork, changing the music for a different tempo, and using the word "hey" instead of "reel". But about a week later I was out running and wondered if something could be done in a contra dance. You'd need a four-face-four dance to get enough people for the hey. This is the result.

Jacqui actually called this dance over Labor Day weekend and suggested a few modifications. These may be seen in the dance above and in the one called "Promenheyde".

The animation plays at 120 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. 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.

1-4Lines of four, forward and back
5-8Four ladies chain diagonally, all end in a line in the middle
9-24Turn right, full hey for 4 couples, changing leads at ends
25-28Four gents chain diagonally
29-32Swing (original) partner into lines facing original direction

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=HeyIsForHumpbacks

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The dance is copyright © 2019 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.