• David Tilove created this wonderful resource, and maintained it and expanded it over a period of several years. In 2020, responsibility for maintaining the list was handed over to Eric Allender. Under his limited stewardship, there are no plans to search diligently for new material. If you are aware of some videos that you think should be added, contact him via the Contact Us link. The material below was written by David Tilove.
  • The list focuses on videos and animations of English country dances. It does not include :
    1. Scottish Country Dances, which can be reliably located at the extraordinary Scottish Country Dance Database.
    2. Regency Dances - Cotillions, Quadrilles, Minuets,  though some Regency and Jane Austen Balls include dances which we would classify as English Country Dances and those are included.
    3. Contra dances - with the possible exception those for which the line between contra and English is blurred.
    4. Instructional videos showing figures but not whole dances. See, e.g. 22 dance figures shown on the Fain Music site
      1. Links to dance animations were added in 2015, by selecting what we considered English Country Dances from the collections created by Dance Kaleidoscope (a mix of ECD, contra, Welsh and Regency in a collection of about 300 dances), and Regency Dances (over 600 dances, mostly Regency but many familiar to English country dancers), as well as a splendid origami crane animation of Dutch Crossing.
          
  • The original search for videos was seeded from three sources:
    1. The results of an extensive Bing search of English country dances which may have been generated by CDSS. The major weakness of this otherwise wide-ranging list was that  at some point  the results consisted primarily of repeated copies of videos embedded in aggressively commercial sites.   
    2. Bob Green's Dance Video Archives
    3. Paul Ross' YouTube channel: childgrove.
    4. From there, the search followed any videos suggested as "related" by YouTube, and explored the channels of the persons uploading those videos or commenting on ECD videos, as well as independent Google, Bing and Yahoo searches for individual dances. We subscribe to channels (currently about 140) that have been productive, taking into account the "dances-to-cats" ratios, etc.
        
  •  Dance titles, venues, callers, and musicians are generally taken from the video posting.
    1. Title: When the video does not disclose the name of the dance, it can often be teased out by analyzing the formation, figures and music using the sources listed below and, when that is not productive not, we rely on videographers, callers, musicians, experienced dancers or the kindness of strangers for identification.
    2. Collection: Unless otherwise noted, these are YouTube channel names . 
    3. Venue: Some physical venues are recognizable because other videos have identified them. In some cases, dancers have supplied the detail.
    4. Leader/caller and musicians: Information posted with the video is supplemented either when the performers are recognizable or, more often, when some extrinsic info (e.g. a dance flyer or facebook page) can be found.
    5. In some cases the dance sponsors prefer the venue and/or caller remain anonymous.

  • Author. Limited research into primary sources was involved. Excellent sources for choreographer, composer, and dates are:
    1. Antony's Heywood's dance database: Over 16,000 dances with formation, figures (not complete choreography), recordings, author and sources. The site can be used to identify a set of dances with common figures or sequences of figures.
    2. Hugh Stewart's Dance Index for the Cambridge(UK) Folk Club which also provides the full indices of historical publications
    3. The Ottawa ECD Club's MacNash Dance instruction index
    4. The Dance Figures Index: English Country Dances 1650-1833 compiled by Robert M. Keller, for the Colonial Music Institute. 
    5.  Keller's The Dancing Master 1651-1728; An Illustrated Compendium provides images of the the dance scores and steps.
    6. Peter Barnes' two-volume English Country Dance Tunes
    7. Instructional & Video Links for English Country Dances assembled by Albert Hybl offers a very concise and handy access to Keller, Macnash, and a wide range of other sources of dance instructions as well as many videos. (Includes Scottish and Contra dances).
    8. Some dances have two or more recognized variations.  When the figures differ (e.g. longways duple vs. three couple set,) the distinctions are noted. We aim to identify varying reconstructions and variants: see Dance Variations


  • Music.
    1. To see the notation or hear the tune for a particular dance, try abcnotation  which has a large collection  of folk and traditional music (570,00 tunes). The Playford collection, for example, can be found here.  These sites offer the ability to listen to the tunes on line.  The list of dance sources below, includes entries for transcriptions of the content into abc format. For those sources you will need an abc editor, such as the free,  open source EasyABC.  Most the abc transcriptions in the list of historic sources below were the work of John Chambers.
    2. Scott & Jenny's list of English Country Dances provides  the formation, meter and key. for over 500 dances.
    3. The Traditional Tune Archive was developed to "gather... as much information as possible about folk pieces to attempt to trace tune families, determine origins, influences and patterns of aural/oral transmittal, and to study individual and regional styles of performance."; The Village Music Project: focuses on English dance tunes published between 1650 and 1890 ; and.  Folkopedia, Historical Tune Books from EFDSS, lists historical English & Irish tunebooks. 

  • Historical Material
    1. Over the past few years access to historic documents has grown markedly, The list which follows offers links to English Country Dance sources back to the 14th century.  First, a few general sources:
      1.  The Historic Dance Association: Dancing Book Publications  offers a bibliography of over 2,000 dancing books
      2. The US Library of Congress Collection of historic dance manuals can be viewed online here..
      3. The English Folk Dance and Song Society's website for the Vaughan Williams. Memorial Library provides on-line access to dozens of dance and tune books circa 1797-1838.; 
      4. The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is "an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe".  While the first edition of the English Dancing Master was in 1651, many of the dances were pre-17th century; SCA members and Kingdoms have provided scholarly reconstructions of the early Playford dances. See: SCA Renaissance Dance Homepage
        5. SCA Dance Data Base Search Engine, The Letter of Dance, Estienne's Country Dance Book, and Cynnabar Dance manual

        Historic sources: Dances, Tunes, and Texts

         

        Modern ECD choreographers on-line
        1. Susan and Tom Amesse´
        2. Denise Atherton
        3. Michael Baraclough
        4. Charles Bolton
          5. John Chambers
        5. Jens Dill
        6. Carl Dreher
        7. Liz Donaldson
        8. Fred Freuthal
        9. Brooke Friendy & Chris Sackett
        10. Graham Foster
        11. Elizabeth Goossen
        12. Bob Green
        13. Sharon Green
        14. Nikki Herbst
        15. Scott Higgs
        16. Colin Hume
      1. Chrystal Gallacci Jones
      2. Kalia Kliban
      3. Sharon McKinley
      4. Miriam Newman
      5. Bob Olson
      6. Chris Page
      7. Joseph Pimentel
      8. Anna Rain
      9. Gary Roodman
      10. Melissa Running
      11. Diane Schmit
      12. Tom Senior
      13. Dan Seppler
      14. Andrew Shaw
      15. Victor Skowronski
      16. David Smukler
      17. Rebeckah Valencioa
      18. Lynn Williams Jensen
      19. Alan Winston 

        20. Last updated on 11/25/2021