Cotillions and Country Dances 1792

Primary Source

The Gentleman & Lady's Companion: Containing the Newest Cotillions and Country Dances; to which is added Instances of Ill Manners to be carefully avoided by Youth of Both Sexes. 1798.

This is an excellent source for the choreography of numerous country dances and cotillions (square figures) that would be popular in the Regency era.

This was downloaded and compiled from a scanned copy available on the Library of Congress website where it is presented a page at a time.

I have compiled this into a single PDF to facilitate printing and sharing of this useful resource.

The associated metadata on the LC Website:

The gentleman & lady's companion : containing the newest cotillions and country dances, to which is added, instances of ill manners, to be carefully avoided by youth of both sexes.

OTHER TITLES
Gentleman and lady's companion

CREATED/PUBLISHED
Norwich : Printed by J. Trumbull, 1798.

SUMMARY
The etiquette section of this manual anticipates many nineteenth-century concerns regarding decorum and bodily control, and some of the ill manners described include "swinging the arms, and all other awkward gestures" and "leaning on the shoulder, or chair of another person." The manual provides nine figures for the cotillon, a precursor to the quadrille consisting of a series of figures known as changes that were performed alternately with the cotillon figure. The manual also gives the figures for seventy-nine English country dances, a popular group dance performed by a column of men facing a column of women.

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