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.. 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), circle, cast (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=TheRedBull-Playford

< Prev Top Next >

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 © 2021-2025 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.