Hand Turn
Also known as: Allemande, Single Circle, Swing, Birl.
Bars: 2 for a half turn, 2 or 4 for a full turn, 4 or 6 for a turn and a half.
A hand turn involves two people who walk toward each other, take either left, right, both hands, or crossed hands, turn round in a circle, release hands and go back to place. Right turns go clockwise, left turns counter clockwise. Two hand turns are usually clockwise but occasionally are specified to be counter- clockwise. (I suppose you could have a right hand turn where the dancers backed up, to make it go counter-clockwise, but I've never seen that).
The figure may be fractionalized, with a half turn (or turning once and a half) leaving the dancers in each other's places.
The way hands are held varies. A handshake grip is common, but sometimes a forearm, or elbow grip will be used. When spinning rapidly the elbow is usually bent and the hand held close to the body to reduce torque, with more time, the arm is extended.
When the turn is extended to more than two people it becomes either a Hands Across (Star) for right and left turns, or a Circle for a two hand turn.
Variants
In the 19th century the term "turn" usually meant a two hand turn, while "swing" usually meant a right hand turn.
In Scottish the term "birl" ("burl", "burrle", "birrel", etc.) is used to mean a very fast turn, usually gripping elbows, in a Scottish dance.
In Square Dancing and later Contra Dancing the term "allemande" is used to mean a hand turn. In the 18th century the term "allemande" was quite ambiguous, having at least three different meanings, but none of them was a hand turn. The first publication I know of to use "allemande" in this sense was Henry Ford's (Benjamin Lovett's) Good Morning published in 1925.
I have often been told that this "allemande" comes from a corruption of the French à la main (to the hand), but I'm pretty sure that it actually means a figure that came from Germany (Allemande being the French adjective meaning German).
Modern Square Dance rarely uses a two hand turn, but when it does the call is "single circle".
History
I presume the hand turn is as old as dancing itself
Some dances which (probably) use this figure
- Dances for which I have animations
- Dances in (R)SCDS Books
Note: This list may be incorrect or incomplete.
See Also
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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.