Mad Robin ~ Kitch

Mad Robin ~ Kitch is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1695 in The Dancing Master, 9th ed.. It was interpreted by Jim Kitch in about 1993. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: B flat major. An online description of the dance may be found here.

Playford writes:

The 1. man turn the 2. wo. with his right-hand, and his own Partner with his left, and cast off below the 2. man The 1. wo. turn her Partner with her right hand, and the 2. man with her left, and cast off below the 2. wo. The 1. wo. cast up above the 2. man and slip down the middle, the 1. man go up between, and then cast off below and turn hands The 1. wo. go up the middle and cast off below the 2. wo. the 1. man cast up above the 2. man, and slip down, the middle and turn his Partner

Mad Robin has been reinterpreted several times. Sharp's interpretation in 1922 reverses the order of Playford's B section (Playford has M1 in the middle in B1, Sharp has W1).

The version in The Playford Ball uses Sharp's B1, but then has the 2s active instead of M1 in B2.

Note that neither of these interpretations uses what we now call the "Mad Robin" figure, in that partners do not face each other as they move along their track.

The first use I can find of the modern figure occurs in "The Saucy Sailor" from Maggot Pie, but they don't call it a Mad Robin there (they don't call it anything). The first use of the figure and name seems to come from Jim Kitch in his dance "The Lover's Knot" (published in 1993).

The earliest description of this dance using eye contact that I can find appears to be dated 1999 (this page claims a date of 1686 for the dance, Playford published the music in 1686, but the dance did not come until later in 1695).

Eric Allender adds:

Jim Kitch was a Philadelphia-area dancer, and I can attest that dancers in the Philadelphia area danced the "Mad Robin" figure as you describe it in the 1980's (if not before). This caused some tension when Philadelphia dancers would dance in the New York area, where teachers typically would stress that the better style (in their opinion) involved casting and turning your back on your partner.

So the figure was in use before 1993, but perhaps only in Philadelphia.

The tune, also called Mad Robin, was published by Playford in 1686 (without dance instructions), then republished with the dance in 1695. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album A Playford Ball. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 109 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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), cast, mad robin (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 transience of my youtube URLs. 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=MadRobin-Kitch

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1993 by Jim Kitch. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.