Webfeet: The Rifleman

The annotated Rifleman

A longways dance, but unusual for English Ceilidh as instead of the men being on one side of the set and the women on the other, you stand next to your partner and both look across the set to another couple. This is known as Becket Formation.

The dance is in three parts, for the majority you dance back and forth across the set with the other couple but the last part is where the two couples closest to the band make a mad dash to the bottom of the set in a more (or less) elegant way.

Here the bold shows the headings as they appear in the Community Dance Manual, Book III, the annotations hopefully describe the detail.

A1: Meet and Cross

• Couples (who are standing on one side of the set or the other) join inside hands and dance across the set towards each other and back.
• Dance towards each other again, drop hands with their partners. The man picks up the hand of the person 'opposite'. He turns left on the spot, guides the new partner round back into line.

This is sometime described as 'gateposts', meaning that the man really doesn't move much apart from turning three quarters of the way round to the left and leaving 'the lady' in the place his partner started. The man's stayed where he was and the ladies have changed position

A2: Repeat to places

You then do it again to get back to where you started....

• Couples join hands again and dance towards each other and back.
• Dance towards each other again, drop hands and the man picks up his partner's hand and leads her round left back to her original place.

B1: Ladies chain

The second part of the dance is a 'Ladies Chain', something more complicated to describe than do...

• The two ladies each other give their right hands and dance past each other, they hold out their left hands to the opposite man...
• Who takes their left hand, leads them round half a turn left so that they are facing back into the set.

As above the move means that the ladies have changed position. The movement just flows on and you repeat the movement to get back to where you started.... (the second half of the Ladies' Chain)

• The two ladies each other give their right hands and dance past each other, they hold out their left hands to their partner...
• Who takes their left hand, leads them round half a turn so that they are facing back into the set where they started

B2: Tops down the middle

• In which the top two couples endeavour to get safely to the bottom of the set...

There are at least two ways of doing this, the quickest and safest way is to dance (polka) down as couples. You are reasonably fast, maneuverable, and can get out the way in time if you run out of music. Recommended if you are in a very long or narrow set.

The second option is for the four people to cross their arms, form up into a tight circle (think like a four leaf clover) and spin down the set to the bottom. This movement is colloquially known as the Moulinex; everyone else needs to step back a bit.

The rest of the set shuffles sideways up towards the band as the lunatics hurtle down to the bottom...

The Rifleman is traditionally done to a rant, a severe test of stamina and indeed the ankles if the dance goes on for any while.

The North West Morris community will take to this like a duck to water, the North West 'Polka' step is a rant by another name (and in clogs). The rest have to suffer the aide memoire of:

• Po-tato Crisps, Po-tato Crisps, Po-tato Crisps

and so on. That is, it is a

• ONE-two-three and ONE-two-three and

rhythm where you cross your right foot across in front of the left and tap the heel of the ground for the ONE, this 'front foot' goes back it's proper side for a second tap and then both feet together. Repeat with the left foot in front...

The energetic can get away with this, and the really energetic can do the rant and get a bit of movement and grace in the dance. Fortunately it it also possible to fit an anonymous sort of soft shoe shuffle to the rhythm where it is substantially easier to move...

This is a dance where the ladies have all the fun. In fact it's not until you try swapping places that the men realise quite how much fun the ladies are having. The tricky bit is that, there are quite a few dances which include a Ladies' Chain but the Mens' Chain is nearly non-existant. You need to think about it....

Origins...

The dance appears in the the Community Dances Manual, book III, which means it was noted down south of the border in the 1940/50's. It says:

• Collected Weardale, Co. Durham from Miss Cole who first danced it at Alston in Cumberland, where it was known as The Galopade.

James Scott Skinner's The People's Ballroom Guide of 1905 has it as the Galopade County Dance