The Happy Captive ~ Bolton
The Happy Captive ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1777 in Twenty four Country Dances for the year 1777. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in about 2004 and published in Retreads Vol.10. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 40 bars.
Thompson writes:
Lead thro' the 3d. Cu: & cast up one the Gentn. hands round 3 at bottom & his Partner at top lead thro' the 2d. & cast off. the Gentn. hands round three at top & his Partner at bottom lead down up cast off lead outsides
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 Charles Bolton (including interpretations 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 | 2s lead below 3s and cast back |
| 5-8 | All back to back (right shoulder) | |
| 9-12 | 2s split, M2 down, W2 up, circle left at ends | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 2s lead above 1s and cast back |
| 5-8 | All back to back (left shoulder) | |
| 9-12 | 2s split, M2 up, W2 down, circle right at ends | |
| B1 | 1-2 | 2s short lead down, turn in to face up |
| 3-4 | 2s lead to top, 1s cast to middle | |
| 5-8 | Top couple, followed by others, cast to bottom to invert the set | |
| B2 | 1-4 | Lines of three fall back, come forward |
| 5-8 | All two hand turn partner |
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=TheHappyCaptive-Bolton
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2004 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.