Joan's Placket

Joan's Placket is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1698 in The Dancing Master, 10th ed.. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2026. It is an improper duple minor longways dance. It is a multipart dance. The dance lasts 96 bars. The tune is a jig.

Playford writes:

The 1. cu. sides of one side and on the other side Then dance to one another and turn And dance to one another the second time and turn The man goes down on the wo. side, and the we. on the man's side, the rest do the same.

This is one of those dances where everyone starts out proper, but the first time though the dance the top couple progresses by changing sides. The next time through they face the 2s (M1 to W2, W1 to M2) and do the same figures except with their neighbors, rather than partners, progressing down the line.

In Playford's day, only the top couple would cross over, as only the top couple would be active. I've changed the dance slightly to have all the "1s" cross over at the start, to fit modern behavior. (for an example of the old way of starting this kind of dance see: Parson upon Dorothy #2)

The music consists of a 4 bar A strain, and an 8 bar B strain, both repeated.

I am choosing to interpret Then dance to one another means dance facing one another (showing their setting steps to each other) rather than dancing toward, but the other interpretation is possible.

A "placket" is either:

A slit in a garment, allowing for ease in dressing.
A pocket
A petticoat

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 dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

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=JoansPlacket