Leister House
Leister House is an English Country Dance. It was devised by T. Davis in 1748 and published in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1748, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Both Walsh and Davis published the same words and same tune in the same year. Walsh in Caledonian Country Dances, Vol II. Part I (dance 84) and Davis in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1748. I have no idea which should be given credit for being the first to publish the dance. Davis claims his dances were "never danced before they were printed", while Walsh says his dances were "in Vogue". If these claims are true, then Davis published first.
Davis writes:
First Cu. foot it and cast off one Cu. & turn. the 2d Cu do the same Cast off & lead up a Breast with the 2d. Cu. & cast off into the 2d Couple's Place & Right Hand & left all Round
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.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s set and cast down as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s two hand turn | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 2s set and cast down as 1s lead up |
| 5-8 | 2s two hand turn | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s cast down below 2s and lead up between them into a line of four |
| 5-6 | Line of four lead up | |
| 7-8 | 1s cast down | |
| B2 | 1-8 | Face partner, four changes of rights and lefts |
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=LeisterHouse
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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
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.