Cumberland Square Eight
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Cumberland Square Eight is a Quadrille. It is a traditional dance with no clear origin. It was interpreted by EFDSS in 1939 and published in English Dance & Song. It is a Square dance. The dance lasts 64 bars. An online description of the dance may be found here.
Collected in Cumberland by the EFDSS and published in 1939 in the magazine "English Dance & Song". Republished in Vol. 1 of the "Community Dances Manual" in, I believe, 1949. The only significant difference I note is that earlier publication calls for a "pivot ring", while that later calls for a "basket".
I'm not sure what a "pivot ring" is, but the basket has a long history in the US, I know of at least four variants. Many of them use the "buzz step" which in the UK is called a "pivot step", so that tends to back up the idea that the two may be synonymous.
The animation plays at 120 counts per minute. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color.
The dance contains the following figures: circle, hands across, back to back, promenade, basket swing
Note: This list may be incorrect or incomplete, also it only shows the figures used by the interpreter, not necessarily the deviser.
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=CumberlandSquareEight
I do not have a publication date for the dance and do not know whether it is under copyright or not. The interpretation is copyright © 1939 by EFDSS. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 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.