The Nut ~ Williams
The Nut ~ Williams is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Lowe in about 1831 and published in Lowes' Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide, Edinburgh. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
The Lowes write:
The first Gentleman turns the second Lady by the right hand, which he retains, and gives his left to the second Gentleman; the first Lady passes through below the Gentlemen's arms, and her partner following, they go down the middle, up again, and pousette.
If you look at other dances by the Lowes you will find that "down the middle and up" is progressive, and "poussette" is not. This is at variance with the RSCDS which does the reverse, but is quite in keeping with 19th century dances.
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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| 1-4 | M1+L2 right hand turn |
| 5-6 | M1 retains L2's hand, joins with M2, balance in line |
| 7-8 | L1 goes under the men's arch, M1 follows her |
| 9-16 | 1s go down the middle, turn, come back to 2nd place as 2s lead up |
| 17-24 | Poussette, 1st corner positions push |
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=TheNut-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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
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.