Smith's Boree is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1726 in The Dancing Master, The Third Volume, 2nd ed.. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1995 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 7. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. It is a triple progression dance. Originally this was a single progression dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
Playford writes:
Note: Each Strain is to be Play'd twice over.
The first Man turn the 2d. Wo. with his Right-hand The 1st. Wo, do the same The 1st. Man Hey with the 2. and 3d. Man, and the 1st Wo. Hey With the We. at the same time, and both cast off Then lead thro' the 3d. cu. and cast up above the 2d. cu. and lead down and turn your Partner
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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
A1 | 1-4 | On the right diagonals right hand turn |
A2 | 1-4 | On the left diagonals left hand turn |
B1 | 1-6 | End couples cast, middles lead up, to start a morris mirror hey |
7-8 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up | |
B2 | 1-3 | 3s back up to gate the 1s down and around |
4-6 | 2s back up to gate the 1s up and around | |
7-8 | 1s lead down to the top of the set below as others cast up one place |
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=SmithsBoree
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.