Sturbitch Fair

Stourbridge Fair

Sturbitch Fair or Stourbridge Fair is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1710 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2020 and published in Colin Hume's Website. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 40 bars.

Young writes:

Note: The first Strain is to be play'd twice, and the last but once.
First Cu. cross over and Figure thro' the 3d Cu. then cast up and Figure thro' the 2d Cu. and cast off The 2d. Cu. do the same The 1st Man and 1st Wo. cross into their own Places, then the 2d Man and 2d Wo. cross into their own Places, the Back to Back with your own, then Right and Left quite round, and the 1st Cu. cast off

Originally a triple minor. (the 3s did nothing)

The tune was published with the dance, and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

The animation plays at 113 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: cast, lead, figure eight, hey, circular hey, cross go below, back to back (and probably others).

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=SturbitchFair

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2020 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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
Creative Commons License 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.