Short and Sweet

Short and Sweet - Bray is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Bray in 1699 and published in Country Dances: Being a Composition Entirely New. It was interpreted by ? in about 2012. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars. The tune is a jig.

Thomas Bray writes:

The Men and We. meet in the middle of the Room, with their right Shoulders to each other, the Men uppermost and stand all in a row longways the Room; then all turn to the left Hand, and stand as at first The same on the other side, only turn back to the right hand Then 1st. Man change places with his Wo. with his right hand, and lead up and turn S. from each other, then 1st. Man turn the 2d. Wo. with his right hand three quarters round, till he come into the middle of the Room; the 1st. Wo. turns the 2d. Man at the same time with the left Hand till she come into the middle of the Room The 1st. Man go back to back with the 2d. Wo. the other cu. the same at the same time, then the 1st. cu. cross over and meet below, the 2d. cu. meet and lead up the middle and turn S. And so to the end.

The tune was composed by Henry Purcell and first published by Playford. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album More Favorites of the Boston Centre. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 107 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, lead, siding, cross go below, back to back, (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=ShortAndSweet-Bray

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2012 by ?. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.