Queen Victoria
Duple proper

A1	Couple one turn by the right hand once around and fall back into original lines Same couple turn by the left 1&1/2 around and take right hands with the opposite neighbor to form a wavy line-of-4
A2	Balance twice in this wave All turn by the right once around with your neighbor, release hands and gents continue the clockwise motion to spin halfway round in place (over right shoulder) so that all are facing down; take hands in a line-of-4
B1	Down the hall 4-in-line, actives turn as a couple in the center (thereby getting proper again) Return and hand cast
B2	Right and left through, across and back

Queen Victoria is an attractive and satisfying dance, with nice connection throughout. Use elegant (perhaps regal) music for it; marches work very well. On the surface, it appears to be a fairly straightforward dance, and so it is. But Queen Victoria is also filled with opportunities for beautiful dancing. Let's look at some of them:

A1- Both allemande turns are 8 counts, but the first one goes once around while the second goes once-and-a-half. Use this difference! The first turn is more stately and wide, and you settle comfortably back into your line as it ends. The second turn is more powerful, and ends in the wave just in time. (By the way, as in Hull's Victory, the second couple can delight those around them by accommodating the process of creating the wave. Note that in Hull's it is the #2 gent who must move up the set and put his back to the music to be ready, while here it is the #2 lady who does that.)

A2- Consider what happens when there are two balances, Balancing brings an entire room together, and the second one is almost always more "together" than the first. Also, that extra little curling turn for the gents at the end of A2 is a wonderful moment. The turn is over the right shoulder because it flows that way, and also because the gentleman, ever courteous, would not want to turn his back on a lady with whom he had just been turning. Callers, help the men with this detail during the walk-through, and prompt a little longer if necessary.

B1- Different dances suggest different timing for even such a seemingly simple figure as "down the hall and back." In Queen Victoria, don't stray too far down the hall. Our favorite timing uses all 4-count phrases: just 4 steps to go down, 4 to turn as a couple, 4 to return, and 4 for the hand cast, which of course works best with a nice, firm connection.

B2- Like many chestnuts that end this way, Queen Victoria is a far, far better dance if dancers also control the phrasing on the right and left four, arriving at each stage just in time, and acknowledging one another throughout. Despite how common this figure is in older dances, many dancers today are not used to a proper right and left through, where you turn with your same-sex neighbor. Remember on these turns that the right-hand person goes forward and the left-hand person backs up. If a dancer near you looks panicked, we think that it is fine to touch him or her reassuringly (either with a pull by across, or an arm around during the turn). However, once everyone feels confident, try the turns without touching, working together with force of personality alone.

Ralph Page found Queen Victoria in a nineteenth century dance manual and revived it in the late 1950s. It has been a favorite ever since. It appears in his Northern Junket magazine in 1959. A very similar dance, "The Queen Victoria Country Dance," was also collected (with a tune) in Orkney in 1955 and can be found in the Community Dances Manual, Book 7, published by CDSS's counterpart across the pond: the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

It happens that Queen Victoria herself (whose reign was the longest in England's history) was a great fan of country dancing, and so it is apt that one of the ways in which her name has been memorialized is in this gem of a dance.

By the way, if you are hunting for more chestnuts in the CDSS News, check out David Millstone's article about Sackett's Harbor in issue #148 (May/June 1999). Sackett's is one of our favorites, and it is no wonder that it is perhaps the most frequently encountered triple minor dance in today's contra dance communities.