Capt. MacBean's Reel ~ Thompson
Capt. MacBean's Reel ~ Thompson is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in about 1757 in Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, Vol I, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Thompson writes:
The 1st. Cu. half figure down on their own sides and turn the same up again and turn Gallop down and up and cast off Right hands and Left
The half figure eights could be turned into half heys.
Mirror half figure eights where the 1s start inward are more natural than parallel ones.
The only role of the 3s is to act as posts for the half figure eights, the dance could easily become a duple minor.
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 interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s mirror half figure eight down on their own sides (ending below 3s) |
| 5-8 | 1s right hand turn | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 1s half figure eight up on their own sides (all ending home) |
| 5-8 | 1s left hand turn | |
| B1 | 1-8 | 1s lead down, turn, lead back and cast down as 2s lead up |
| B2 | 1-8 | 1s+2s face partner, four changes of rights and lefts |
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=CaptainMacBeansReel-Thompson
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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
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.