The English Patient

February 2012
Four couples longways, proper
Music: 32 bars of 2/4 or 16 bars of 4/4. I used Serenity Trail by Charlene Thomson (available on request), but I have not yet fixed a tune for the dance. Ideally it would have a repeating A part and non-repeating B.

	Begin with ones facing twos, threes facing fours, inside hands of partners joined.
A1 & A2	Full-set figure-eight (see notes): Zig-zag (4 beats); then middles arch and dive while ends wheel around (4 beats). Repeat 3 more times until everyone is back home.
B	Half poussette clockwise at each end (i.e., ones with twos, threes with fours). Half poussette counterclockwise in the middle (i.e. original ones and fours).
C	Circle left four hands round at each end (i.e., original ones with threes and twos with fours) Partners two hand turn once around.

Notes

For my late wife, Gretchen, who spent way too much of 2012 tethered to various intravenous fluids. A nurse referred to the intravenous pole as Gretchen's dance partner when she had to maneuver with it around her room and its contents. That prompted me to devise a dance in which partners are tethered to each other, having hands joined throughout the dance.
Gretchen was diagnosed with leukemia in late December 2011, and she fought it bravely through August 2012, but it proved to be too much for her. I told her about this dance before she died, but I'm sorry that I was not able to present it in public while she was still with us. How I wish I could still dance tethered to her.
Zig-zag: end couples move forward (toward each other) and toward the ladies' side of the dance; middle couples move forward (away from each other) and toward the men's line.
Arch and dive: The couples facing each other after the zig-zag do this figure. The couple facing down makes the arch while the couple facing up dives through it; both couples simultaneously move sideways toward the men's line to the central axis of the set.
Wheel around: Person farthest out on the men's side of the hall moves forward while partner backs up.
The dance finishes with couples in order 2413, middles having moved to their nearest ends and ends to their opposite middles.
The first two rows of the following diagram illustrates the starting positions and motions of each "change" of the full-set figure-eight. The third line illustrates the starting positions and figures of the B and C parts. The last figure on the third line shows the positions of the dancers at the end of the first round; the fourth line shows the positions of the dancers at the end of the second, third, and fourth rounds.

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