Great Gable
Scottish Country Dance Instruction
Great Gable (R4x32) (4C Square) A 32 bar reel for four couples in a square set. Murrough Landon 20161- 4 1st and 3rd couples each set to partners and turn ¾ by the left hand to end with the men with their backs to the centre facing their partners.
5- 8 1st and 3rd couples dance half a left shoulder reel of 4 across while 2nd and 4th couples set to partners and turn ¾ by the left hand.
9-12 All dance half crossing left shoulder reels of 4 with quick half right hands across in the centre.
13-16 1st and 3rd couples turn by the left hand while 2nd and 4th couples dance half a left shoulder reel of 4 across. End with all the men back to back in the centre facing their partners who are on the sidelines.
17-18 All set to partners.
19-20 All the men dance out to the position currently occupied by the woman on their right turning to face in while all the women, starting slightly to the left, dance into the position just vacated by their partner, turning to face the position they just left. The men have progressed one place clockwise.
21-24 Repeat bars 17-20 from new positions to end with all facing original partners having progressed one place clockwise to 4123 and with all the men back to back in the centre again.
25-28 All dance a quarter Rosace (Schiehallion figure but starting with the men back to back) to end back in same positions as at bar 17.
29-30 All turn partners by the right hand into promenade hold facing clockwise.
31-32 All promenade one place clockwise to end in the order 4123.
(Dance crib compiled by the deviser, Murrough Landon, CC BY-SA Jan 2016 (revised May 2023))
Keith Rose's Crib Diagram
Dance Instruction Videos
Great Gable - Scottish Country Dancing Instruction VideoDance Information
The first 16 bars are a predominantly left handed fugue with 2nd and 4th couples copying 1st and 3rd couples four bars later. The second 16 bars have a more right handed feel.The figure in bars 17-24 is a variant of the set and cast away figure, seen for example in Best Set in the Hall, but with the dancers in the centre dancing out to the positions beside them instead of behind them.
Recommended music: Suitable recording Set of 4x32 Reels (Muriel Johnstone: Dancing Fingers 1, track 7).
(Dance information by the deviser, Murrough Landon, CC BY-SA Jan 2016 (revised May 2023))
Great Gable is a prominent mountain in the Lake District, United Kingdom.
Named for its pyramid-like appearance when viewed from Wasdale, it appears dome-shaped from most other perspectives. As one of the most popular Lakeland fells, it offers numerous routes to the summit.
Great Gable is connected to its smaller sister hill, Green Gable, via the high pass of Windy Gap, and to its western neighbor, Kirk Fell, by the lower pass of Beck Head.
This dance is performed in a square set and the upper section of Great Gable has a roughly square plan, about half a mile on each side, with the faces running in line with the four points of the compass. The fells connecting and subsidiary ridges occupy the corners of the square.
Great Gable And Green Gable From An Unnamed Tarn On Seathwaite Fell
Published in Great Gable, reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Murrough Landon, CC BY-SA.
This page uses content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, along with original copyrighted content and excerpts from Wikipedia and other sources.
Text from this original Great Gable article on Wikipedia.
Image copyright Clive Giddis under this Creative Commons Licence 2.0.
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