![]() ![]() In 1730 James Alexander, who emigrated from Scotland and made his fortune in New York City, wrote out the instructions for twenty-seven dances in a notebook. But when the Pilgrim Fathers reached America in 1620 they presumably brought their dances with them, just like their books and clothes (or maybe they frowned upon dancing and it was later immigrants who brought the dances), and for at least a hundred years their dances were English Country Dances. Whatever the formation, we tend to think of the American style as a walking step, giving plenty of weight, lots of swings. When dancers in England say “American” we usually mean squares and contras, and perhaps a few dances in other formations - a double contra, a circle, maybe one of Ted Sannella's triplets. ![]() There is lots of information on this page that I don't expect to cover when I'm running the workshop, but some people want to know more and will appreciate the information on problems of interpretation and the links to the original documents. I ran it again at Broadstairs Folk Week in 2010 as 3 sessions of 1½ hours, in Urbana, Illinois in 2012 for 1 hour 20 minutes (and gave an unscheduled 35-minute talk on the subject in Chicago the next day while we had all adjourned to the basement because of a tornado warning) and at Soberton in Hampshire in 2013 as 2 sessions of 2 hours. I ran this workshop three times in 2008: at Southam Festival in August for 1½ hours, at my House Party weekend in November for 1¾ hours, and at the Winter Dance Week in Brasstown, NC where it had been expanded to 5 sessions of 1 hour.
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