Top & Bottom ~ Beer
Top & Bottom ~ Beer is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1733 in Caledonian Country Dances: with a through bass for y hopsicord, book 2. It was interpreted by Jenny Beer (website) in 2000 and published in Key to the Cellar. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. The tune is a jig. Someone thought this dance was Intermediate. An online description of the dance may be found here.
Jenny Beer attributes this dance to Thompson, but it appeared earlier in perhaps two books by Johnson. However, Thompson's book is online:
Thompson writes:
The 1st. and 2d. Cu Hands across quite round the same back again the 1st. Man set across and turn and his Parter do the same to the 2d. Man the 1st. Cu. heys with the 2d. Wo. then with the 2d. Man cross over and turn and Right and Left.
The tune was published by Thompson with the dance. It was synthesized using Colin Hume's software.
The animation plays at 120 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: hand turn (allemande), set, turn single, hands across, hey, hey for three, circular hey, shetland hey, set and 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 transience of my youtube URLs. 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=Top_Bottom-Beer
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2000 by Jenny Beer. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 by George W. Williams V
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.