Cupid's Garden ~ Bolton

Cupid's Garden ~ Bolton Cupid's Garden

Cupid's Garden ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1688 in The Dancing Master, 7th ed., London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1989 and published in Retreads Vol.4. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes:
The 1. man go the Hey between the 2. and 3. man into the 4. man's place, then the 1. wo do the same as the 1. man did, then 1. man back to back with his own wo. and cast up into the 2. place, then 1. man cross over into the 2. wo. place, and 2 wo. at the same time cross over into the 1. man's place, then meet and set, and cast off into the 2. cu. place, then go the half Figure into the 2. cu. place, and so turn their own; the rest doing the like.

Originally a triple minor.

The tune was published with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

The animation plays at 111 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 dances of Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-4M1 start half a right shoulder hey with the men
5-8W1 start half a left shoulder hey with the women
A21-41s back to back
5-81s long cast up as 2s lead down
B11-4M1+W3 change by left then W1+M3 by right
5-61s+3s set
7-81s cast down as 3s lead up
B21-41s cross up 3s cast down half double figure eight
5-8All partner two hand turn

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=CupidsGarden-Bolton

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1989 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.