Country Courtship ~ 3 Couple
Country Courtship ~ 3 Couple is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Young (Playford family) (website) in about 1726 in The Dancing Master, The Third Volume, 2nd ed.. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) sometime before 2022-01-10 and published in Another Look at Playford. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
John Young writes:
Note: Each Strain twice.
The first Couple cast off and half Figure with the third Couple, then cross over to the top and cast off The other Couple do the same Then the first Man change places with the second Woman and second Man with the first Woman, and Hands all four half round and cast off Then back to back and Right and Left quite round
The tune was published by John Young with the dance and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.
The animation plays at 100 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), circle, cast, lead, figure eight, rights and lefts, 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=CountryCourtship-3Couple
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. 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.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.