The Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1703 in The Dancing Master, 12th ed., London. It was interpreted by Andrew Shaw in 2009 and published in Farnicle Huggy. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

Playford writes:
The first man and second woman set and fall back, then back to back, then right-hands with the second woman and left with his Partner; The first woman and second woman do the same, the first cu. takes both hands with with their Partner, the second cu. do the same at the same time, and turn half round, then fall back, then cross over, then turn backs and clap, then turn and clap again, then right-hands and left. Each Strain twice.

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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, hey, circular hey, back to 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=TheRoyalNavy

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2009 by Andrew Shaw. 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.