Common Reel of Five

Having started out with the complex "New Reel of Five" created by Regency London dancing master Thomas Wilson, it seems that it would be useful to go back and discuss the "common" reel of five which Wilson included in his books along with his own inventions "to render the work more complete."  It's hard to say how "common" this reel actually was, as I have no sources for it other than Wilson.  It's possible that it was simply so common that no one else saw any need to write it down.  I certainly see no reason for Wilson to have presented it falsely; he was not the least bit shy about taking credit for his own choreography.

The diagram given by Wilson in his  The Complete System of English Country Dancing (London, c1815) is above at left.  The original text, from the same source:

The Lady in the middle at B, heys with the Ladies at A C, then sets to them, then heys with the two Gentlemen at F D, and takes the place of the Gentleman at F, who will then occupy the centre: he then finishes the Reel by setting to the persons at F D, then hey with the Ladies at C A, and leaves one of them in the centre, so that they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure.  

That's reasonably straightforward, though his blithe assurance that "they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure", if taken to the extreme of dancing until everyone is back in their precise original places, will require an awful lot of repeats.  Wilson gives his reel specifically for either three gentlemen and two ladies or vice-versa, but the gender of the five dancers has no effect on the dance.  Any combination, or five of one gender, will work fine.

Wilson's description of the common reel of five is also found in the first (1808), third (1811), and fourth (1822) editions of his An Analysis of Country Dancing.  I don't have a copy of the second edition to check, but one may safely assume it appeared there as well.  In the first edition, it appeared with a different diagram the title "Another Reel of Five" instead of just "Reel of Five", and a slightly less specific description of the progression: 

The Lady in the middle at B, heys with the ladies at A C, then sets to them, she then sets to the Gentlemen at F D; then heys with the Gentlemen at F D, which brings one of them into the centre, so that they all progressively occupy every situation in the figure.

The note about it being the common reel of five is the same.  Wilson may have expanded his description to reduce confusion.  See the notes below for the alternate diagram and my thoughts on it.

In the following reconstruction, I've used the letters to refer to the dancers rather than the locations.  

Common Reel of Five (8b + 16b x 5, 10, 15, or 20)

8b    B passes left shoulders with A to start a standard hey for three with A and C, ending with all three back in their original places.  This is the introductory figure, not repeated.

8b    B sets to A for four bars and then to C for four bars, then turns a quarter to his or her left and...

8b    B passes left shoulders with F to start a hey for three with F and D, with one extra change to leave F in the middle; F turns to face B in F's original place

 

The reel then continues with the last sixteen bars, F setting to B and D, then turning left to hey with C and A, C passing to the middle. 

 

Repeat, repeat, repeat...and eventually conclude with:

 

8b   Center dancer sets to the dancer they are facing, then to the opposite dancer, and end.

 

After a total of five times through those middle sixteen bars, B will be back in the middle, and all the outside dancers will have progressed one place clockwise.  Everyone has not been in "every situation", but everyone has been into the center and out again, which is a reasonable stopping point.  Ending the dance with a final eight bars of setting evens out the music to 16b x 6.

 

If a longer dance is desired, or the dancers want to get back to their precise original places, repeat the setting and heying (sixteen bars) five more times before the final eight bars of setting and the dancers will end in opposite places from where they started, or five more times for three-quarters round, or five more times to get everyone home -- a grand total of 336 bars (16b x 21) of dancing, which is going to take ten to fifteen minutes, depending on the speed of the music.  That's not a completely insane idea for historical Scottish dancing, in which reels could go on indefinitely, but unless your dancers are up for a marathon, I would suggest stopping after either five or ten times through the main figure (96 bars or 176 bars).

 

You can see about four minutes of dancing this reel at the video of the Regency-era ball I attended in Moscow back in May, here.  There's a slightly rocky start, but by the second or third time through, the dancers in the front set have it down fairly nicely.  Notice that that set has three ladies and two gentlemen, but they don't start the way Wilson recommends, with one of the ladies in the center and the gentlemen placed symmetrically on opposite sides.  As I said above, it makes no difference in the dancing.

 

Performance and Reconstruction Notes
Wilson's instructions are actually quite good, and if one takes his order of listing the dancers as meaning the order in which one should hey and set with them, the reconstruction from his later manuals is fairly straightforward.  The only detail he leaves out is which shoulder to start the hey with.  Since the center dancer is turning to the left to begin the hey, it makes sense to have the dancers pass by the left shoulder, so the center dancer only has to turn about forty-five degrees.  That lets him gracefully finish setting with the lady he or she is facing, rather than having to use the last setting step to turn 135 degrees to get into position for a right-shoulder hey.

 

The only possible issue with this comes from the diagram at left, which is the one used in the earliest known appearance of this reel, from the 1808 first edition of Analysis, replaced at least by the third edition, if not earlier, by the one at the top of this post.  The lines in this diagram suggest a hey by right shoulders instead of by left.  The instructions in the 1808 manual are a bit more vague: rather than specifying that the dancer at F comes to the center, Wilson just says "one of them", meaning either D or F, which opens a little bit of wiggle room to have the center dancer turn right when beginning the hey and have (on the first iteration) D come into the center instead of F.  In that case, right shoulder heys are easier and more graceful.  Wilson made a number of changes somewhere between the first and third editions of Analysis, and it's impossible to know whether they reflect changes in practice, changes in Wilson's preferences, or corrections of errors.

 

If dancing my reconstruction, which I believe better follows the later editions, the things to remember as you come into the center are (1) turn around to face the dancer you just traded places with and set to that dancer first and (2) after setting to the opposite dancer, aim diagonally to the left and curve left around the dancer there to begin the hey.  If everyone does this, it will all work fine.  Or, if everyone turns to the right to start the hey and begins it by passing right shoulders, it will also work just fine.  If some people turn one way and some turn the other, the reel will still work in some sense, but the progression of dancers into and out of the center will be interestingly random.

 

 

Steps
Since Wilson does not specify steps for Scotch reels, I recommend the steps given by Scottish dancing master Francis Peacock in Sketches relative to the history and theory, but more especially to the practice of dancing (Aberdeen, 1805) and the pas de basque, a documentable period setting step.  Everyone begins on the right foot.  For the heys, use the Kemshóole step, one per measure.

For the setting, the dancers can use a simple pas de basque or, for the ambitious, any of Peacock's setting steps or combinations.  Reels are an opportunity for improvisation by the dancers, though I prefer to use simpler steps in the more complex choreographies and the pas de basque makes it easy for the center dancer to turn while setting.  Other possibilities include eight Minor Kemkóssy each way, though it's hard to make so many of them feel like anything other than jogging in place.  Two pairs of Single Kemkóssy, Seby-trast, or Lematrást steps (all one bar each or two bars for a pair) would also work, or any of the myriad possible combinations of these steps.

Music
Wilson gives the timing of eight bars each for heying and setting.  The length of the figure makes using a recording challenging; unless one happens to have a track of precisely the right length, any recording would have to be edited to fit precisely if the dancers want to end at a specific point.  Obviously live musicians are ideal, but in their absence, tracks for possible trimming would include Spare Parts' reels on The Regency Ballroom (128b, could be cut down for the shortest 96b version) and Green Ginger's very lengthy (384b) recordings, which could be chopped down for the longest version.  There are many, many other recordings of reels around, so provided one avoids the many with not-period-for-the-Regency-ballroom accordions, there are plenty of others to choose from.

Or, the dancers could just end wherever the music does and not worry too much about it.  You can see that in the video if you watch until the end.  They did have live musicians, but it looks to me like the master of ceremonies told them that was plenty and they could stop.  I wasn't dancing, myself, but I think as a dancer, I'd have agreed.

Common Reel of Five (8b + 16b x 5, 10, 15, or 20)

8b    B passes left shoulders with A to start a standard hey for three with A and C, ending with all three back in their original places.  This is the introductory figure, not repeated.

8b    B sets to A for four bars and then to C for four bars, then turns a quarter to his or her left and...

8b    B passes left shoulders with F to start a hey for three with F and D, with one extra change to leave F in the middle; F turns to face B in F's original place

 

The reel then continues with the last sixteen bars, F setting to B and D, then turning left to hey with C and A, C passing to the middle. 

 

Repeat, repeat, repeat...and eventually conclude with:

 

8b   Center dancer sets to the dancer they are facing, then to the opposite dancer, and end.

 

After a total of five times through those middle sixteen bars, B will be back in the middle, and all the outside dancers will have progressed one place clockwise.  Everyone has not been in "every situation", but everyone has been into the center and out again, which is a reasonable stopping point.  Ending the dance with a final eight bars of setting evens out the music to 16b x 6.

 

If a longer dance is desired, or the dancers want to get back to their precise original places, repeat the setting and heying (sixteen bars) five more times before the final eight bars of setting and the dancers will end in opposite places from where they started, or five more times for three-quarters round, or five more times to get everyone home -- a grand total of 336 bars (16b x 21) of dancing, which is going to take ten to fifteen minutes, depending on the speed of the music.  That's not a completely insane idea for historical Scottish dancing, in which reels could go on indefinitely, but unless your dancers are up for a marathon, I would suggest stopping after either five or ten times through the main figure (96 bars or 176 bars).

 

You can see about four minutes of dancing this reel at the video of the Regency-era ball I attended in Moscow back in May, here.  There's a slightly rocky start, but by the second or third time through, the dancers in the front set have it down fairly nicely.  Notice that that set has three ladies and two gentlemen, but they don't start the way Wilson recommends, with one of the ladies in the center and the gentlemen placed symmetrically on opposite sides.  As I said above, it makes no difference in the dancing.

 

Performance and Reconstruction Notes
Wilson's instructions are actually quite good, and if one takes his order of listing the dancers as meaning the order in which one should hey and set with them, the reconstruction from his later manuals is fairly straightforward.  The only detail he leaves out is which shoulder to start the hey with.  Since the center dancer is turning to the left to begin the hey, it makes sense to have the dancers pass by the left shoulder, so the center dancer only has to turn about forty-five degrees.  That lets him gracefully finish setting with the lady he or she is facing, rather than having to use the last setting step to turn 135 degrees to get into position for a right-shoulder hey.

 

The only possible issue with this comes from the diagram at left, which is the one used in the earliest known appearance of this reel, from the 1808 first edition of Analysis, replaced at least by the third edition, if not earlier, by the one at the top of this post.  The lines in this diagram suggest a hey by right shoulders instead of by left.  The instructions in the 1808 manual are a bit more vague: rather than specifying that the dancer at F comes to the center, Wilson just says "one of them", meaning either D or F, which opens a little bit of wiggle room to have the center dancer turn right when beginning the hey and have (on the first iteration) D come into the center instead of F.  In that case, right shoulder heys are easier and more graceful.  Wilson made a number of changes somewhere between the first and third editions of Analysis, and it's impossible to know whether they reflect changes in practice, changes in Wilson's preferences, or corrections of errors.

 

If dancing my reconstruction, which I believe better follows the later editions, the things to remember as you come into the center are (1) turn around to face the dancer you just traded places with and set to that dancer first and (2) after setting to the opposite dancer, aim diagonally to the left and curve left around the dancer there to begin the hey.  If everyone does this, it will all work fine.  Or, if everyone turns to the right to start the hey and begins it by passing right shoulders, it will also work just fine.  If some people turn one way and some turn the other, the reel will still work in some sense, but the progression of dancers into and out of the center will be interestingly random.

 

 

Steps
Since Wilson does not specify steps for Scotch reels, I recommend the steps given by Scottish dancing master Francis Peacock in Sketches relative to the history and theory, but more especially to the practice of dancing (Aberdeen, 1805) and the pas de basque, a documentable period setting step.  Everyone begins on the right foot.  For the heys, use the Kemshóole step, one per measure.

For the setting, the dancers can use a simple pas de basque or, for the ambitious, any of Peacock's setting steps or combinations.  Reels are an opportunity for improvisation by the dancers, though I prefer to use simpler steps in the more complex choreographies and the pas de basque makes it easy for the center dancer to turn while setting.  Other possibilities include eight Minor Kemkóssy each way, though it's hard to make so many of them feel like anything other than jogging in place.  Two pairs of Single Kemkóssy, Seby-trast, or Lematrást steps (all one bar each or two bars for a pair) would also work, or any of the myriad possible combinations of these steps.

Music
Wilson gives the timing of eight bars each for heying and setting.  The length of the figure makes using a recording challenging; unless one happens to have a track of precisely the right length, any recording would have to be edited to fit precisely if the dancers want to end at a specific point.  Obviously live musicians are ideal, but in their absence, tracks for possible trimming would include Spare Parts' reels on The Regency Ballroom (128b, could be cut down for the shortest 96b version) and Green Ginger's very lengthy (384b) recordings, which could be chopped down for the longest version.  There are many, many other recordings of reels around, so provided one avoids the many with not-period-for-the-Regency-ballroom accordions, there are plenty of others to choose from.