Daniel de Lincoln (Tim McDaniel), tmcd@panix.com, 22 February 2014
| Beats | Steps |
|---|---|
| 16 | Lead up a double and back. Repeat. |
| 8 | Side left. (Note: Playford does not say "againe", so it's just one siding.) |
| 8 | Turn your partner a bit more than a full turn, so the lords' side has progressed one position forward relative to the ladies' side. (Note: Playford does not say "againe", so it's just one turn.) |
On the second repetition (and any even-numbered repetition): The first person on the lords' side and the last person on the ladies' side have progressed past all available partners. They are out for the next repetition. They simply need to walk to the other side before the end of the repetition.
On the third repetition (and any odd-numbered repetition): The first person on the lords' side and the last person on the ladies' side have progressed, but unlike the previous repetition, they have an available partner: the person who stood out on the last repetition. So take them as a partner.
So each person progresses along their side to the end, stands aside for one repetition, comes back in on the other side, progresses in the opposite direction to the other end, stands aside for one repetition, comes back in on their original side, and progresses in the original direction until home.
Yes, you dance with people regardless of sex. Really. Playford writes, at the start of the third repetition, "First man take the 2. man with his left hand, last Wo. taking the next Wo. with her right hand.". For the start of the fourth repetition, "then the 2. man stand alone the first taking the third man, the last Wo. taking the next".
In fact, you dance with absolutely everyone regardless of sex. Twice. Playford ends with "Change thus every time till you come to your owne place.".
A source is http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~flip/contrib/dance/playford.html#Playford_43 or http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/.
Here, I'm comparing it not to a version in any historical manuscript, but how it's done in the SCA. The version done in the SCA is a nice little mixer with people of the opposite sex, and is practically a prototype of the Playford "USA" dance (Up a double, Siding, Arming). As Urraca wrote in http://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/pipermail/sca-dance/2008-May/000719.html,
(Couples as many as will in a circle.)
Holding hands, double into the center and back. Repeat.
Side left and right with your partner.
Arm right once around with your partner.
Arm left one and a half times, so that you end up in a new spot.
Take hand in a circle & begin again.
Perronnelle, in http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/bg-dance-ansteorra.org/2012-May/001084.html, states that John [Fitzhugh] Millar invented it. I think I read elsewhere that it was published in the 1980s.
A problem with attempting the Playford version is that the available music tends to be for the modern version, in particular track 14 on Musica Subterranea's blue CD. It has two repetitions of the B phrase, when the Playford version has but one. Very luckily, these musicians pause very briefly after each phrase. I was therefore able to use an audio-editing program (called audacity) to slice out the last half of the first B and the first half of the second B, and shorten it to the needed length.
The next problem is trying "till you come to your owne place" with recorded music. I had to do separate versions for 3 to 6 couples.
A third problem is the length. For N couples, you dance in each position, and sit out once at each end, for 2N+2 repetitions. In the Musica Subterranea version, each repetition is about 20 seconds. The six-couple version takes 14 repetitions and almost 5 minutes. You also dance twice with each person. I also recorded versions for half length, where you dance with each person once and sit out once.
A fourth problem is that men have to dance with men. In a fair number of cases, I gather that that means a man will contact another man's cooties, which will bite and infect, causing all the men to get man-touching disease or even cause them to spontaneously combust on the spot. I have no suggestion on how to handle this other than by providing cootie shots to all the men.
The URL of this page is http://www.panix.com/~tmcd/dance/dms2014/half_hannikin.html.