Colin Hume's Dance Instructions

2-couple dances 3-couple dances 4-couple dances 5-couple dances 6+-couple dances Circle dances Longways dances Sicilian Circle dances Square dances Other dances My interpretations Tunes only

Most of my dances are available in my books. I'm not planning to publish any more books, so my new dances will be published here on the website. And as books go out of print I'm planning to give the instructions here rather than reprint the books — I have a lot of books at my house! There are also a few dances by other people: in some cases the dances have connections with me; in others they're just good dances that I wanted to put before a wider audience. So feel free to call any of the dances listed here, but please get them right and don't forget to tell the dancers who they're by!

I've categorised them the way I would the dance cards in my briefcase, so I separate the various formations and in some cases I separate Playford-style from American-style or General. A note for Americans: we say “Playford” rather than “English”, so you will find waltz dances under General. I've also included some of my interpretations (reconstructions) of dances from Playford and other publishers of that period. To search for a dance, enter a few letters of the dance title you're looking for — the search is not case-sensitive. The program will look for these characters anywhere within the title. If there's just one match you'll be taken straight to it. If there are several you'll be given the list (alphabetical or in order of composition/publication depending on which button you use), and you can click on the one you want. Leave the box blank to list all the dances.

As always, I've written the dances out as I would call them, rather than in a technical language which each caller will then have to translate into English. I've tried to make the instructions clear without being too pedantic. Unless otherwise stated, each paragraph is eight bars (measures) long. A full stop (period) marks the end of a four- or eight-bar phrase; a semicolon marks the end of a two-bar phrase. I find this very helpful when I'm calling a dance, but some people think I'm going out of my way to be difficult.

Some dances have printed music available in GIF or JPEG format. Click on the appropriate treble clef button to view and print the music. Or right-click the button and choose “Save Target As…” (Internet Explorer), “Save Link Target As…” (Netscape) or “Save Link As…” (Firefox) so that you can then juggle with the image using an appropriate program.

The music is held in ABC format, which you can learn all about from the ABC Home Page. When you click on the treble clef button the text is processed by the very useful Convert-A-Matic from www.concertina.net. At this point you can listen to it as a MIDI file — it may not be a great performance but it gives you a chance to hear the tune without needing to be (or ask) a musician. You can display the PDF output and then print or save it — you will need Adobe Reader which you can download here free of charge. You can see the ABC which produced all this. And you can switch from chords above the stave (American style) to chords below the stave (English style). If you want to edit lots of tunes and print out the modified musical notation (I can't think why you would!) you'll need to pick up the full text file and start from that.

Each dance has a [Print] button, so you can print out just the dances you want and not need Print Preview to work out which pages to print.

Click here if you want to input your own ABC and play it or print it using my styling.