Cream Pot

Cream Pot is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1750 in Caledonian Country Dances: with a through bass for y hopsicord, book 2, London. It was interpreted by Bernard Bentley in 1971 and published in The Fallibroome Collection, Vol. 4. 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 64 bars.

Bentley says this book lacks a title page, but he gives a call number for it from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. The book in their catalogue which currently bears that call number is Caledonian Country Dances: with a through bass for y hopsicord, book 2 published by John Johnson.

Johnson writes

First Cu. cross over one Cu. and turn Cross over two Cu. and turn then lead up to the top, foot it and castoff; Right and Left with the 2d. Cu. foot it and turn Corners the same with the other Corners then lead out Sides and turn the same with the other Sides and turn it out

There is another dance with this name published by Rutherford, which uses a 48 bar jig (rather than the 64 bar tune here).

Cast off one Cu. & turn your Partner The 2d. Cu. does the same Cross over two Cu. Lead up to the Top Foot it & cast off Hands across quite round with the 3d. Cu. Right Hand & Left with the Top Cu.

The tune, Miss Grace Hay's Delight was probably composed by Nathaniel Gow, it is similar to the tune Cream Pot published by Johnson with the dance. It was performed by the Odd Sundays Garage Band (Judy Linsenberg, Shira Kammen and Patti Cobb). The music is used with permission from the Odd Sundays Garage Band.

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), set, cast, lead, rights and lefts, lead and cast, cross go below (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=CreamPot

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1971 by Bernard Bentley. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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
Creative Commons License 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.