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Chelsea Reach

Chelsea Reach was a favorite dance of Christine Helwig, the cofounder of Country Dancers of Westchester and leader of the ECD performance group The Chelsea English Country Dancers, which she established in New York in September 1990. I remember dancing Chelsea Reach under Christine’s direction and then very rarely, if at all, elsewhere. It was a thrill, therefore, when Beverly Francis and Elizabeth Freedman revived this classic for the New York 2015 Playford Ball. The dance was reconstructed by Sharp in his Country Dance Book III and also appears in Keller and Shimer’s The Playford Ball Book. No small part of the beauty of English country dancing is the ephemeral geometry of each dance, and certainly this is true of Chelsea Reach, with its temporary lines up and down and across the hall in Part 1, its stars and simultaneous dance around in Part 2, and the set that expands for the instant of a double forward and a fall back from the corner positions in Part 3 just before the grand chain. Also the dance has another appealing feature, namely, texture: The left-hand stars in Part 1, the dance around in Part 2, and Part 3’s grand chain are all executed with a skipping step to contrast with the usual dance walk. Despite the few hiccups in this performance, I hope that the dance’s special choreography comes through. Particular thanks are due the 3rd String Trio: Karen Axelrod, Peter Barnes, and Aldo Fabrizi. Their up-tempo energy for this dance kept us in high spirits. –Paul Ross