Editing Country dance (section)

==Revival==
[[File:StateLibQld 1 201235 Country dance, Helenvale, ca. 1910.jpg|thumb|left|240px|Country dance, [[Helenvale]], Queensland, Australia, about 1910]]
Only due to the efforts of [[Cecil Sharp]], [[Mary Neal]] and the [[English Folk Dance and Song Society]] in the late 19th and early 20th century did a revival take place, so that for some time schoolchildren were taught country dances. In the early 20th century, traditional and historical dances began to be revived in England. Neal, one of the first to do so, was principally known for her work in ritual dances, but [[Cecil Sharp]], in the six volumes of his ''Country Dance Book'', published between 1909 and 1922, attempted to reconstruct English country dance as it was performed at the time of Playford, using the surviving traditional English village dances as a guide, as the manuals defined almost none of the figures described. Sharp and his students were, however, almost wholly concerned with English country dances as found in the early dance manuals:<ref>{{cite book|last=Walkowitz|first=Daniel J.|author-link=Daniel Walkowitz|title=City Folk: English Country Dance and the Politics of Folk in Modern America|year=2010|publisher=New York University Press}}</ref> Sharp published 160 dances from the Playford manuals and 16 traditional village country dances. Sharp believed that the Playford dances, especially those with irregular forms, represented the original "folk" form of English country dance and that all later changes in the dance's long history were corruptions.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sharp|first=Cecil J.|title=The Country Dance Book, Part II|year=1911|publisher=Novello and Company}}</ref> This view is no longer held{{By whom|date=January 2020}}.

The first collection of modern English country dances since the 1820s, ''Maggot Pie'', was published in 1932, though only in the late 20th century did modern compositions become fully accepted.<ref>{{cite web|title=Maggot Pie|url=http://www.colinhume.com/demaggot.htm|access-date=18 November 2012}}</ref> Reconstructions of historical dances and new compositions continue. Interpreters and composers of the 20th century include Douglas and Helen Kennedy, Pat Shaw, Tom Cook, Ken Sheffield, Charles Bolton, Michael Barraclough, Colin Hume, Gary Roodman, and Andrew Shaw.

[[File:English country dancing at Pinewoods.webm|thumb|upright=1.3|Contemporary English country dancing at [[Pinewoods Camp]] in Massachusetts, U.S.]]
The modern English country dance community in the United States consists primarily of liberal white professionals.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Walkowitz|first1=Daniel J.|author-link=Daniel Walkowitz|title=The Cultural Turn and a New Social History: Folk Dance and the Renovation of Class in Social History|journal=[[Journal of Social History]]|date=2006|volume=39|issue=3|pages=781–802|doi=10.1353/jsh.2006.0022|jstor=3790291|s2cid=142830484|issn=0022-4529}}</ref>