Old Dan Tucker ~ Link
Old Dan Tucker ~ Link is an American Country Dance. It was devised by Charles Link in 1893 and published in Unique Dancing Call Book, Rochester, NY. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022 and published in American Country Dances. It is a Custom dance. In this dance the men are permuted by: 4124 and the women by: 1234. The minor set lasts 40 bars.
Join hands & circle to the left 4 Circle to the right 4 All Balance 4 Swing 4 Tucker balance 4 Swing 4 Grand right and Left 8 Promenade all 8
Burchenal writes:
Formation: Any number of couples join hands in a circle, with one odd man (Dan Tucker) in the centre.
(1-2) Balance All (to Tucker)
(3-8) Turn left and Right (or "Allemande Left")
(9-16) Right Hand to Partner, and Grand Right and Left (Tucker joins in)
(1-8) Promenade All
(9-12) Forward and Back (13-16) All Hands Round
I assume that when Link says "Swing" he means a modern partner swing. This may not be the case, swing was used with all kinds of meanings in 1860 (don't know what it meant in 1893). Burchenal's version of the dance includes hand turns, and that is certainly a possible meaning for swing.
According to Burchenal, the grand right and left goes on until the caller says stop, at which point all the men scramble to find the nearest partner and promenade to her home. Tucker joins in the grand right and left. I'm not sure how that works for the man behind where tucker joins in, it seems to me that he is out the moment tucker moves in ahead of him.
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.
| 1-4 | Circle left... |
| 5-8 | ...and back to the right |
| 9-12 | Balance (set twice?) |
| 13-16 | Partner swing |
| 17-20 | Reform the ring and balance in and out to Tucker |
| 21-24 | Corner swing |
| 25-32 | Grand right and left (Tucker joins in) |
| 33-40 | Promenade to lady's home |
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=OldDanTucker-Link
The dance is out of copyright in the US, but I'm not sure of other jurisdictions. The interpretation is copyright © 2022 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.