All the way to Beckenham

All the way to Beckenham is a New England Contra Dance. It was devised by Colin Hume (website) in 1980 and published in Dances with a Difference, Vol. 1. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate.

Beckenham is in south London.

Starts in a line of four across with the 1s between the 2s, all proper.

Colin Hume classifies this dance as an "American Longways Duple".

The tune was composed by Peter Jenkins for the dance. It was performed by Kafoozalum (Peter Jenkins, Mollie Koenigsberger, and Paul Lennon). The music is used with permission from Colin Hume.

The animation plays at 129 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily (no music plays during this slow set). Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

The dance contains the following figures: lead, figure eight, rights and lefts, swing, turn corners (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=AllTheWayToBeckenham

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The dance is copyright © 1980 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.