Webfeet: Straight Hey for Three

A Straight Hey for Three

The idea behind a 'straight hey' is:

• You are dancing with your line of men (or your line of women)...
• You are dancing up and down your set...
• You don't want to hit anybody :-)
• You have to get back to where you started...
• Everybody moves, it is not one person dancing round the others...

Assume you are in a line of three, the mantra is...

• You pass the people coming towards you with alternate shoulders...
• When you are at the top of the set you do a broad turn the right and pass the person coming towards you right shoulders...
• When you are at the bottom of the set you do a broad turn the left and pass the person coming towards you left shoulders...
• You are drawing a 'figure eight' on the floor.

To describe this in detail, you start by:

• If you are at the top of the set (say, you are dancing as a man and are in the first man's position, the 'Red Arrow' in the image), face down
• Otherwise face up...
• If you are in 'number 2's position in the middle of the set, you have to actually remember to face up... the people at the bottom of the set will face up anyway as there is nowhere else reasonable to face :-)

You then dance a 'figure eight' in your line:

• The top and middle man pass right shoulders, the 'top' man then finds himself heading towards the bottom man. They pass left shoulders...
• The middle man is heading up to the top of the set and does broad turn right to face down the set again and sees the bottom coming towards him/her. They pass right shoulders...
• The bottom man pauses a little until he sees the top man heading towards him, passes him left shoulders and the middle man right shoulders. At the top of the set he similarly does a broad turn to the right.

This continues, with everybody weaving 'right shoulders/left shoulders' and doing broad turns at the ends; a turn to the right at the top of the set and a turn to the left at the bottom. See this in the animation

If learning/practicing the move try it 'with hands', this both gives clear signals to the person heading towards you and helps you to remember which side you are going

... as a figure in a dance

In dances like the Staffordshire Knot the two sides are be dancing parallel to each other. There will be the 'line of men' dancing a hey and the 'line of women'. It is quite reassuring to look across the set and see you partner dancing the same track in his/her set

There are other dances where both sides of the set dance a hey but as if there is a mirror down the centre of the set.

More information

The Hey (or Haye) goes back a long way:

• The hey as described in Orchésographie, in the Dance de la Haye and translation and images
• And described in the Country Dance Book (vol 6): The Hey and scroll down to the 'Straight Hey for Three'
• Different kinds of Hey and more types and variations