La Tempête
Scottish Country Dance Instruction
LA TEMPETE (R48) Round The Room 4C RSCDS Book 22 couples facing 2 couples, Ladies on partner's right, 1s on right of 2s, 4s on right of 3s. 1s face 3s as 2s face 4s
Start positions:
4 3
2 1
1- 8 1s+4s dance RH across and LH back to places
9-16 2s+3s repeat above Fig
17-24 All 4 couples set to partner twice and turn 2H
25-32 All 4 couples slip step across (Men pass BtoB) and back to places (Ladies BtoB)
33-40 1s+3s also 2s+4s circle 4H round to left and LH across back to places
41-48 All 4 couples advance 2 steps and Retire 1 step, clap 3 times, 1s+2s dance under 3s+4s arms to face next 2 couples
(MINICRIB. Dance crib compiled by Charles Upton, Deeside Caledonian Society, and his successors)
Keith Rose's Crib Diagram
Dance Instruction Videos
La Tempête - Scottish Country Dancing Instruction VideoDance Information
La Tempête is a Scottish Country Dance that was published by Lowe around 1850 in Lowe's Selection of Popular Country Dances, Edinburgh. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1925 and published in RSCDS Book 2.Modern sites say that this is a round the room dance, but if you look at RSCDS Book 2 (and especially at the first edition of that work) you will find that it should be danced longways in a four line set.
Dance Animation videos By George Williams are available for both longways and round the room dances from the link above.
(Dance information copyright, reproduced here with the kind permission of George Williams)
The dance name La Tempete (The Tempest) predates Lowe, appearing in several early 19th-century French and British sources, including quadrille manuals from the mid-1810s, under the same title. This shows that Lowe, around 1850, was publishing a dance that already had an established name, and that the title was not created in Scotland.
The structure of this dance matches earlier continental versions which were known on the continent as a 'tempête' set dance in which opposite lines advance towards each other and pass through one another, producing a visual impression of disruption or collision. Early descriptions repeatedly stress the crossing of the two lines. This provides the only plausible period explanation for the name, although it is never stated explicitly: the figure resembles a 'storm' of dancers meeting and breaking through.
The name appears consistently in French. Even in English and Scottish collections, the French title is retained unchanged. This strongly implies that authors treated it as an imported French dance with a foreign name whose meaning did not require explanation to contemporaries.
La Tempête Crib - Before Minicrib
Dance information licensed under this Creative Commons Licence 4.0.
Text from this original La Tempête - Lowe article on Country Dances, Ancient and Modern (upadouble.info).
Image copyright L Abbott, all rights reserved, reproduced here with kind permission.
Additional search terms: The Tempest.
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