[SCA-Dance] Halfe Hannikin

[Tim McDaniel]

<http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~flip/contrib/dance/playford.html>
quotes

     Lead up a D. forwards and back _.__ That againe _:__
             Sides all _._ turn your owne _:__ First man stand alone,
             and the last Wo. stand alone, the rest of the men take all
             the next We.
     ________________________________________
     Lead up all as before _:__
             Sides all _.__ Turne your We. _:__ First man take the
             2. man with his left hand, last Wo. taking the next
             Wo. with her right hand.
     ________________________________________
     Lead up as before _:__
             Sides all _.__ Turn your we _:__ then the 2. man stand alone
             the first taking the third man, the last Wo. taking te next.
             Change thus every time till you come to your owne place.


I notice that neither "Sides all" nor "turn[e]" say "That againe".
I don't think that's significant.  For example, if Playford were read
literally, the haying in Whirlygig would have the upper triangle
arming while the lower triangle was two-handed turning.  In the case
of Halfe Hannikin, I don't see how you could fill the music available
with one siding and one turn.

On Wed, 14 May 2008, Ben Pung <ben at houseofpung.net> wrote:
> Second, the dance has doubles and sides, but not arms. It includes a
> "turn your own" figure, but that's not quite the same thing.

*blush* I guess I really should make the time to sit down and go thru
Playford (at least the dances I know off the top of my head, only a
few) and figure out his terms, or at least notice the difference
between "armes all" and "turn your owne".

(Turning instead of arming does make the dance even more interesting
from a debunking point of view.)

So I'm supposing that it's one two-handed turn clockwise followed by
one two-handed turn counter-clockwise.

>> I'm not at all good at interpreting Playford: is there a good
>> reconstruction that my brief Googling didn't show?
>
> http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~white/ECD/halfhannikin.html
> http://www.srcf.ucam.org/round/dances/cdb/cdb4/hannikin

Many thanks!  (The first explicitly says siding and turning twice.)

Are there other Playford or ECD dances that have this sort of
progression, for comparison?  These two pages have two of the three
techniques I thought of for getting the sit-outs back in:

- drexel: not well-written (read literally, it would lead to the sides
   progressing *two* apart on each rep), but what I think Dafydd meant
   is that each second turn is 7/8 of the way around, so the men
   progress up half a place and the women progress down half a place
   each time.  After two reps, the men are one place up from the women,
   leaving holes (one each at each end) for the outie to join.

- ucam: alternating progressing.  On odd-numbered reps, the men move
   up a place; on even-numbered reps, the women move down so that the
   outies can rejoin the dance.

My first thought:

- after each rep, the women leave the second turning to go down one
   position.  This makes each rep the same, and has more precise
   placement (in a sense) than the half-way movement of drexel.

   If done with precision, this would make the entire set shift down
   the hall one position with every second rep.  However, in the groups
   I've danced with, progressive dances tend to creep up the hall until
   the front couple start getting cramped by the front wall.  This
   notion would allow for, even encourage, such creep.  But it's
   encouraging imprecision.

------------------------------------------------------------

> Heart's Ease and Rufty Tufty are always good choices.

I am SO INCREDIBLY SICK of Spurn and Turn.  Tho' I'm not allergic to
Rufty Tufty yet, I could become tired of it quickly.

> I've also started teaching Millison's Jegge, which is basically a
> simpler (and earlier) version of Black Nag, and it works with the
> same music.

Cool!  Speaking of "weird and not quite identical to what we know".
This may really screw with our muscle memory -- they may come to
hate me a little.  One can only hope.

The other advantage of Millisons Jegge is that one rep progresses:
couple 2, couple 3, couple 1.  We have a CD which repeats Black Nag 3
times: after reps 1 and 2, our lead couple scurries down to the foot
while the others are doing the first doubling forward.  (So each pair
dances Black Nag once from each position.)  With progression built in,
no extra-textural scurrying needed.

The next dance down is "The Spanish Jeepsie": just given the title,
I want to look at it. ...  *slaps forehead* I bet "Jeepsie" ==
"Gypsy", and I believe "gypsying" is a couple turning without hands
while facing each other.

Danielis Lindicolinum
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com