Whirle It About

Whirle It About is an English Country Dance. It was published by Wright in 1740 in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, Vol. 1, London. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1995 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 7. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 36 bars.

Wright writes:

Each strain twice.

The 1st man turn the 2d wo. and cast off 2d wo. turn 1st man & cast off leat to ye wall back again, all four take hands & go quite round the 1st Cu. lead through 2d Cu. & cast off & foot it to each other, then turn hands

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 dances of Ken Sheffield (including adaptations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-4M1+W2 two hand turn
5-8M1+W2 long cast left, W1 moves to W2's spot, M2 to M1's
A21-4W1+M2 two hand turn
41-4W1+M2 long cast left, others move home
B11-4Lead neighbor out, turn, lead back
5-8Circle left
9-10Turn single left
B21-61s lead down, turn, lead back and cast off as 2s lead up
7-10Partner left hand turn

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=WhirleItAbout

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.