The Red Bull

The Red Bull is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1698 in The Dancing Master, 10th ed., London. It was interpreted by Scott Pfitzinger (website) in 2019. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

Playford writes:

First man take his wo. by both hands, and turn till his wo. be uppermost, 1. man fall back between the 2. cu. a Diamond; 1. man cast up above the 2. man, his wo. cast down below the 2. wo. the men turn contrary wo. twice; 1. man and 1. wo. cast down; 1. man turn both we. till the first man comes into the second's place; 2. man turn the we. till he comes into the 1. wo. place


Note: Each Strain is to be play'd twice over.

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 transcriptions and interpretations of Playford dances found on http://playforddances.com/ from the various editions of The Dancing Master are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-41s two hand spiral three-quarters into a diamond formation with the 2s who move up a slightly
A21-4M1 cast up into 1st place, W1 cast down into 2nd place
B11-4Turn contrary two hand turn
5-81st corner people long cast down as others move up
B21-4M1 take hands with women, circle three
5-6M2 take hands with momen, circle three until M2 is in W1's place
7-82s two hand turn to proper

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=TheRedBull-Playford

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2019 by Scott Pfitzinger. 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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.