ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


The Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society has published this CD-ROM version of the database as part of the conference, John Playford and The English Dancing Master 1651, held in London on March 24–25, 2001. My special thanks to Malcolm Taylor at the English Folk Dance and Song Society, for providing many of the images from the EFDSS collection, and for permission to publish them.

Most of the images used in this publication are from the English Folk Dance and Song Society collection. Others are from the British Library,  University of Glasgow Library and the Country Dance and Song Society library at the University of New Hampshire. Thanks to Brad Foster, of CDSS, for offering to put the database on the web-server. Thanks, as well, to Kate Van Winkle Keller and Carolyn Rabson for allowing me to use some of the music data from the National Tune Index. I am also particularly grateful to the University of New Hampshire, and William Ross, Head, Milne Special Collections and Archives, for agreeing to host this database, and to Daniel O. Cheever, at the Milne Special Collections and Archives, for his assistance in publishing the database as part of the New Hampshire Library of Traditional Music and Dance . Finally, special thanks are due to my resident consultant, favorite dance partner and wife, Kitty, for her indefatigable assistance in locating sources and reviewing the publication. Her bibliographic work was the foundation for this database.

In publishing this database, it is my hope that dance teachers, scholars and musicians will use these original sources as the basis for interpreting more dances and music for the English Country Dance repertory. Since less than a quarter of the unique dances have been interpreted, and many researchers do not have access to the original sources or microfilm facsimiles, this publication can provide the source material needed to create modern, or period, interpretations of these dances.

The database is searchable from an Internet browser such as Netscape® or Internet Explorer. Users can search for words or character strings in the Dance Data, or Source Data

The database is copyrighted by the author, Robert M. Keller. Individual records, with images, may be downloaded from the CD-ROM for personal or scholarly use. Permission to reproduce or publish, either in print/hard-copy, electronically or on the Internet should be requested from the author at Colonial Music or through the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society.