Two figures that turn up frequently at the end of country dances in the Regency era are "Swing Corners" and "Turn Corners". The two are not interchangeable; in the early nineteenth century, "swing" meant to turn by one hand and "turn" meant to turn by two hands. That's not the only difference between the figures, however.
Some basic orientation: both figures are performed after the active couple has progressed one place, leaving them in the center of their minor set of three couples. If the active couple faces each other, the person diagonally across to the right is their first corner; the person diagonally to the left is their second corner. Here's a diagram:
W2 W1 W3
top of set bottom of set
M2 M1 M3
M1 and W1 are the active pair in their progressed places. The active man's first corner is W3 and his second corner is W2. The active woman's first corner is M2 and her second corner is M3. "First corner" and "second corner" are not historical terms; I'm using them just to help with the sequence of the moves. Period descriptions generally use "top" and "bottom" to refer to the current positions of the second and third couples in the minor set.
Swing Corners
Swing corners is the same as the modern contra move called "contra corners", though in historical country dancing it is done only in triple minor sets rather than duple minor sets "borrowing" from a minor set above or below.
Here's a description of the move from Regency dancing master G. M. S. Chivers in The Modern Dancing Master (London, 1822):
Swing Corners
The lady swings her partner with right hand, then the top gentleman with left, while her partner does the same with the bottom lady; then give right hands to each other in the centre; the lady then swings with the bottom gentleman, while her partner does the same with the top lady. (This is performed from the centre.)
Rival dancing master Thomas Wilson published a very nice set of engravings of the various parts of the figure in his dancing manuals from at least 1808 onward, culminating in this final diagram, taken from the fourth edition of An analysis of country dancing (London, 1822):
This was accompanied by the description below:
Swing Corners
The Lady and Gentleman at A B meet at I and swing with their right hands, the lady moves to D in the line C, the Gentleman at F in the line E, they swing with their left hands the top Gentleman and bottom Lady, the Lady continues in the line G, and the Gentleman in the line H, they meet again at I and swing with right hands, the Lady moves in the line K, swings the Gentleman at L with her left hand, the Gentleman moves in the line N, and with his left hand swings the lady at O, they then return to their places at A B, the Lady in the line M, and the Gentleman in the line P, which finishes the figure.
All that alphabet soup boils down to exactly the same figure as that given more succinctly by Chivers.
Turn Corners
There are two major differences between this figure and the previous: (1) The dancers turn by two hands instead of by one, that being the difference between "swing" and "turn", and (2) The active dancers turn only their corners, not their partners. Here's Wilson's diagram for the figure, taken from The complete system of English country dancing (London, c1815).
Wilson's description:
Turn Corners
The Lady at A moves in the line a and turns the top Gentleman, while the Gentleman at B moves in the line b and turns the bottom Lady; the Lady passes on, turns the bottom Gentleman, returns in the line c to her place at d, while the Gentleman moves to and turns the top Lady and returns in the line e to his place at f, which finishes the Figure.
Chivers leaves out the ways in which the active couple pass each other (right shoulder on their way to their first and second corners; left shoulder at the end back to places) but describes basically the same figure:
Turn Corners
The first lady turns the top gentleman with both hands, while her partner does the same with bottom lady; the first lady then turns the bottom gentleman, while her partner does the same with the top lady. (This is performed from the centre.)
Neither dancing master specifies footwork, but both figures can be accomplished in eight measures of music using seven chassé, jeté, assemblé. In the first three measures the active couple swings/passes partners and swings/turns corners. The corner dancers should begin moving as soon as the active couple does and use three chassé, jeté, assemblé. By the fourth measure they should have dropped hands as the corners jeté, assemblé in their places and the active couple travels onward (swing or pass partner) with a fourth chassé. On the fifth, sixth, and seventh measures the active couple swings/turns their second corner, who join in with three chassé; on the eighth measure, all are back in their starting places, and actives and second corners conclude with jeté, assemblé.
A performance tip: for swing corners, the corner dancers should begin moving on their first chassé (first or fifth measure) and move along their lines (men along the men's line/women along the women's) toward the center, making contact with the active dancer already well out of their corner. For turn corners, the corner dancers should begin moving across the top or bottom of the set toward the other line. This is a tightly-timed figure, and moving with the music rather than dancing in place will help the active couple complete the corner turns in time.
Turn corners, mid-18th century version
The above figures are suitable for dance of the early nineteenth century. Before that, however, the terms "swing" and "turn" were not quite as fixed. In the first edition of An analysis of country dancing (London, 1808), Thomas Wilson actually describes "turn partners" as a right-hand turn and does not list "swing partners" at all, though elsewhere in the manual his usage matches the later definitions. By the third edition (London, 1811), however, he has divided the figure into "turn" (two hands) and "swing" (one hand) and made the difference explicit in his explanations.
Several decades earlier, Nicholas Dukes published one of the earliest figure manuals, A concise & easy method of learning the figuring part of country dances (London, 1752). He gives a figure in that book called "Turn Corners right hand & your partner with your left" with a different pattern from either of the above. Here's his diagram (click to enlarge):
Dukes gives no detailed description, but the diagram shows that the active couple approaches first corners directly, passing partners by left shoulders, swing corners by right hands, swing partners by left hands in the center once and a half round, swing second corners by right hands, and finally swing partners half round by the left, with the dancers ending still in the center of the set, the woman nearer the top and the man nearer the bottom.
Interestingly, Dukes shows the corner dancers advancing across the top and bottom of the set to meet the active dancers, the same trick my students and I evolved by experiment.
If I were reconstructing dance figures from the mid-eighteenth century into the 1780s or so, depending on the exact sequence of figures, I would likely consider this version of "Turn Corners" my first choice rather than the Regency version.
Here's a quick summary of the patterns for the three figures described above:
1752: "Turn corners" = pass partner by left shoulder, turn corners by right hand, partner by left, corners by right, partners by left; end center of set with lady nearer top and gentleman nearer bottom
early 1800s: "Turn corners" = pass partner by right shoulder, turn corner two hands clockwise, pass partner by right shoulder, turn corner two hands clockwise, pass partner by left shoulder back to places
"Swing corners" = turn partner by right hand, corner by left hand, partner by right hand, corner by left hand, pass partner by left shoulder back to places
Note: an addendum to this post was later published as "Revisiting Swing and Turn Corners".
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