Whirligig Lite

Whirligig Lite is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1651 in The English Dancing Master. It was interpreted by Scott Higgs (website) sometime before 2026-05-21 and published in Key to the Cellar. It is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 32 bars. The tune is a jig. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate. An online description of the dance may be found here.

Playford writes:

Lead up all a D. forwards and back That again The middle Cu. go up between the first, cast off, and come to your places again, then cross over between them like the figure of 8. to your places Then as much with the last Cu. Cast off, all do thus.

Sides all That again The 2. man arms the first Wo. and they three go the S. Hey, while the 1. Wo. turns the last man, and do the like with them That again, the 2 Cu. changing their ends Cast off, all do this

Sides all That again First 4 cast and come to your places, then take right hands across and go round to your places As much with the last Cu. Cast off: All do this change.

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, cast, lead, hey, hey for three, lead and cast, siding, arming (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 transience of my youtube URLs. 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=WhirligigLite

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lead up all a D. forwards and back That again	The middle Cu. go up between the first, cast off, and come to your places again, then cross over between them like the figure of 8. to your places Then as much with the last Cu. Cast off, all do thus.

Sides all That again	The 2. man arms the first Wo. and they three go the S. Hey, while the 1. Wo. turns the last man, and do the like with them That again, the 2 Cu. changing their ends Cast off, all do this

Sides all That again	First 4 cast and come to your places, then take right hands across and go round to your places As much with the last Cu. Cast off: All do this change.