Haphazard

Playford writes:

First man and first wo. cross over and go into the 2. cu. place, and the 2 man and 2. wo. cross over and go into the 1. cu. place, then 1. man cross over into the 2. wo. place, and 1. wo. into the 2. man's place, then all four take hands and go round till they come into their own places again, the rest following and doing the same over again. This to the Tune twice over.
Then 1. cu. cast off into the 2. cu. place, and 2. cu. into the 1. cu place, and back to back with their own, then right and left hands with your own, and go round till you come into your places; The other Couples do over the same. This to the Tune twice over.

Cook proposes an interesting variantion on the old way of starting a dance (where only the top two couples danced at first). He suggests that only the top two couples start, and do the first figure, and the original top couple continues doing that figure until they reach the bottom. Meanwhile the original 2s wait out one turn and then start dancing the second figure with the original 3s (now in 2nd position), and the 2s would continue dancing the second figure until they reached the bottom. The 3s would wait their turn and start dancing the first figure, and so on.

This would be difficult to call, and I do not show it here.

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 dance contains the following figures: set, circle, cast, lead, rights and lefts, cross go below, 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=Haphazard

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1979 by Tom Cook (mod). My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.