Right Hand Star ~ Shaw

Both Cecil Sharp (in his Running Set) and Ida Levin (in her Kentucky Square Dances) have dances with this figure. However they call it "Right Hands Across".

Lloyd Shaw writes:

THE CALL:

1. Honors right and honors left.
   All join hands and circle to the left.
   Break and swing and promenade home.
2. 1. First couple out
      to the couple on the right
   2. Form a star with a right hand cross
   3. Back with the left and don't get lost.
   4. Swing your opposite with your right;
   5. Now your partner with your left.
   6. And on to the next
Repeat 2 as written beginning with (b).
Repeat again, changing last line to: Now balance home.
3. And everybody swing.
   Now swing the left hand lady
   With your left hand.
   Right hand to partner
   And right and left grand.
   Promenade right when you come straight.

Repeat 2 and 3 entire for second third and fourth couples.

It is worth noting that Shaw's description of the star (or cross) is of a hands across star. Not the wrist grip star that is common in square dancing today.

Lloyd uses a figure he calls docey-do which is related to but different from the figure Cecil Sharp calls "do-si-do" in his description of the running set (Country Dance Book, Part 5). It is nothing like the figure I know of called do-si-do. Lloyd has many pet names for this figure and I have chosen "Ladies go si and the gents go do" to avoid confusion with the more common meaning. In this dance he doesn't use any name at all, simply describing the figure.

At the end of a circle the hands break, ladies pass between neighbor and the other lady (ladies passing dos à dos), back to her partner who takes her left hand into his left then she turns round behind him, eventually dropping hands. He remains facing the other gentleman as she circles counter-clockwise around him.

Now each takes his/her neighbor of the opposite sex by the right hand and the ladies circle clockwise around their neighbors (the gents continue to face and drop right hands when they need to).

Then each takes partner left in left ending in a courtesy turn hold. The traveling couple can move on to the next this way.

The figure described by the active lady is just a figure of eight, but somehow that term did not cross the Atlantic. This is one of the few old American dances I know of which uses the movement.

This dance appears in Ida Levin's Kentucky Square Dances, 1928 under the name "Lady Round the Lady"

1. Lady around the lady and the gent also.
2. Lady around the gent and the gent don't go.
3. Circle four.
4. On to the next.