Hands Across
Also known as: Star, Cross, Le Moulinet, Mill.
Bars: 4.
Like circles, hands across (or stars) come in both left and right varieties.
To make a right hand star you turn so your right shoulder is toward the center and take the hand of whoever is diagonally across from you. You do not take hands with the other people in the set; instead they will join hands and the two clasps should rest one above the other — this is called a “hands across star”. (In Scottish Country Dance the convention is that the 1st lady and whomever she is clasping will have their hands on top, but I have never heard any rule for English). You then turn the star clockwise until you are back where you started.
In a left hand star, of course you clasp left hands instead and turn the other direction.
Stars may also be fractionalized. “Left hand star half” is a common call.
Sometimes a star in one direction is followed immediately by a star in the other, in which case the distance you travel in the first star is irrelevant as long as you are back where you started at the end of the second.
Occasionally you will have a 3, 5, or 6 person star. You can’t really clasp hands across in this case, just grab into the knot at the middle. A 2 person star is just a hand turn.
Variants
In Contra Dancing, instead of taking hands with the person diagonally across from you, stars are usually made by grasping the wrist of the person in front of you.
Square dancing uses this wrist star when everyone in it is male, but for mixed stars, or stars with all women you simply put your hand in toward the center and touch the other people.
History
The Lovelace MS, 1621~1648, uses the term "hands acrosse" in the dance Bobbin Jone, as does Playford, 1651, and everyone after up to Wilson, 1808.
Cotillions called it Le Moulinet (which means little mill, or little windmill) when they started arriving from France in the 1760s.
In the US: Howe, 1858, page 116, (Boston) still describes a quadrille figure called "Le Moulinet" as "hands across", but he goes on to say that it can also be called a "cross" and a "star". Burchenal, 1918, describes a figure she calls "The Mill" (not using "hands across" or "star"). Modern Square dancing and Contra dancing (and to a lesser extent modern English dancing) call the figure a "star".
Some dances which (probably) use this figure
- Dances for which I have animations
- Dances in (R)SCDS Books
Note: This list may be incorrect or incomplete.
See Also
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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.