The Waterman

Durang's Hornpipe

The Waterman or Durang's Hornpipe is an American Country Dance. It was published by Thomas Hillgrove in 1857 in The Scholar's Companion and Ball-Room Vade-Mecum, New York. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Hillgrove was a New York dancing instructor who published a manual describing then current dances. He probably didn't devise any of them, but his work is often the first reference to a given dance.

He describes three dances he calls "Contra Dances": Money Musk, Chorus Jig, and The Waterman. His instructions for Waterman are:

First lady balance to the third gentleman and turn the second; first gentleman balance to third lady and turn the second; down the middle and back; cast off and right and left.

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.

A11-4L1 set twice to G3
5-8L1 two hand turn G2
A21-4G1 set twice to L3
5-8G1 two hand turn L2
B11-61s down the middle and back
7-81s cast off
B21-81s+2s right and left four

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=TheWaterman

< Prev Top Next >

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. 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.