The First of April

The First of April is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1780 in Twenty four Country Dances for the year 1780, London. It was interpreted by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer in 1931 and published in The Apted Book of Country Dances. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

The authors of the Apted book have no exact date for this dance, they estimate it comes from 1773. However it does exist in Thompson's Twenty four Country Dances for the year 1780.

Thompson writes:
Hands across back again Lead down the middle up again and cast off Hands 6 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: circle, cast, lead, hands across, lead and cast, down the middle and 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=TheFirstOfApril

< Prev Top Next >

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1931 by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer. 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.