English Country Dance

A country dance is any of a large number of social dances of the British Isles in which couples dance together in a figure or "set", each dancer dancing to his or her partner and each couple dancing to the other couples in the set. A set consists most commonly of two or three couples, sometimes four and rarely five or six. Often dancers follow a "caller" who names each change in the figures.

Introduced to France and then Germany and Italy in the course of the 17th century, country dances gave rise to the contradanse, one of the significant dance forms in classical music. Introduced to America by French immigrants, it remains popular in the United States as contra dance and had great influence upon Latin American music as contradanza. The Anglais (from the French word meaning "English") or Angloise is another term for the English country dance. A Scottish country dance may be termed an Ecossaise. Irish set dance is also related.

The term "country dance" may refer to any of a large number of figure-dances that originated on village greens. The term applies to dances in line formation, circle dances, square dances and even triangular sets for three couples.

However the most common formation is the "longways" set in which men and women form two lines facing each other. The "Roger de Coverley", which was for some time the only well-known country dance in England, and "The Grand Old Duke of York" are among the most familiar examples of this kind of dance. Couples form two lines along which each travels at the end of each iteration of figures, meeting new couples and repeating the series of figures many times. Alternatively, dances can be finite, a set forming an independent unit within which the series of figures is repeated a limited number of times. These dances are often non-progressive, each couple retaining their original positions.

Country dancing is intended for general participation, unlike folk dances such as clogging, which are primarily concert dances, and ballroom dances in which dancers dance with their partners independently of others. Bright, rhythmic and simple, country dances had appeal as a refreshing finale to an evening of stately dances such as the minuet.

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