<div dir="ltr">Tips I found that helped me, presented in random order:<div><br><div>Pick one or two squares to watch, preferably with more experienced dancers, and call to them. It will help with the timing. </div><div><br></div><div>When I started calling squares, a friend helpfully pointed out that I was waiting for the tops of the musical phrases to roll around again before starting the next figure, and that meant people were sometimes standing around during a square and that was Not Fun, so I had to learn to let go of the idea that figures had to begin with the musical phrase, like they do in contras. </div><div>That turned out to be hard for me to do, fyi. Your mileage may vary.</div><div><br></div><div>Other advice I've gotten is to start with New England squares, which are assembled in 8 and 16 count phrases like contras. </div><div><br></div><div>If you're unsure about how the timing works, it can be very educational to call a square while you're dancing it. I've had to do that a few times, where there are only seven dancers, and it really taught me a lot about when to start calling various figures. Make a pot of chili and invite seven friends over? </div><div><br></div><div>Finally, I find that the First Night Quadrille, by Bob Dalsemer, is a great square to have in your box if you don't already. Easy to teach to beginners, call without a walkthrough for more advanced dancers and have fun.</div><div><br></div><div>Oh! So a common break is allemande left your corner, face your partner, grand right and left. </div><div>I have better luck teaching that to beginners if I teach the grand right and left first and *then* add the allemande left, rather than teach it in the sequence it's presented in the dance.</div><div><br></div><div>I have no more advice. Good luck! You'll have a great time!</div><div>Meg</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 12:08 PM Jonathan Sivier via Callers <<a href="mailto:callers@lists.sharedweight.net">callers@lists.sharedweight.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> Here is my experience in calling squares for the first time, for<br class="gmail_msg">
what it is worth.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
I had been calling contras for several years and thought I would<br class="gmail_msg">
like to expand my repertoire to include some squares. I chose what I<br class="gmail_msg">
thought was a fairly straightforward square that had been done by the<br class="gmail_msg">
local group, called by other callers, several times in the past. While<br class="gmail_msg">
the dance itself (Texas Star with the Alamo Ring break) wasn't<br class="gmail_msg">
especially hard, what I hadn't taken into account was that there would<br class="gmail_msg">
be a lot of other things for me to be dealing with in calling a square<br class="gmail_msg">
which don't generally occur in contras. So my first attempt at calling<br class="gmail_msg">
a square didn't go very well.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
Here are some of the things I found I needed to deal with in squares<br class="gmail_msg">
that I hadn't encountered in contras.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
If there are multiple squares they won't all keep in sync the way<br class="gmail_msg">
contra sets typically do. So one square will have finished promenading<br class="gmail_msg">
home, while another will still be working on getting there. So you may<br class="gmail_msg">
need to tell the one group to do something like swing at home until the<br class="gmail_msg">
others catch up. The more squares there are the more this will be the case.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
The chances are good you will get off from the music. In contras<br class="gmail_msg">
the dances and music go together very well, but some squares don't fit<br class="gmail_msg">
the music as well and even when they do the fact that some squares may<br class="gmail_msg">
lag behind means you will often end up being off from the music. At<br class="gmail_msg">
first I worried about this a lot and trying to keep track of that and<br class="gmail_msg">
keep things with the music was one more thing overloading my mental<br class="gmail_msg">
resources when I was trying to call squares. So I decided to not worry<br class="gmail_msg">
about it and free up those resources to think about other things. To do<br class="gmail_msg">
that I intentionally get off the music right at the start by doing an<br class="gmail_msg">
intro that takes less than 64 beats. Something like "Circle left,<br class="gmail_msg">
circle right, into the center and back, do it again." Then I can start<br class="gmail_msg">
the dance proper and not worry about being off the music. Of course<br class="gmail_msg">
that leaves the problem of knowing where you are in the music for<br class="gmail_msg">
purposes of ending the dance and music at the same time. This has taken<br class="gmail_msg">
some practice and I'm still not great at it, but most bands are good<br class="gmail_msg">
about ending on a given signal, if you let them know beforehand.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
It was also a surprise, and challenge, to me that I had to keep<br class="gmail_msg">
calling the whole time. I should have seen that coming. As you know<br class="gmail_msg">
the longer you keep calling a dance the more likely you are to make a<br class="gmail_msg">
mistake. So having to call squares all the way through meant I was<br class="gmail_msg">
making more errors. I think that is where patter calling comes in. If<br class="gmail_msg">
you have a nice little rhyming phrase for something you can recite it<br class="gmail_msg">
without really having to think about it and will, hopefully, make fewer<br class="gmail_msg">
mistakes.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
So what I ended up doing was choosing an even easier dance,<br class="gmail_msg">
Sheehan's Reel by Roger Whynot, and a very straightforward break. I<br class="gmail_msg">
deliberately got off the music at the start of the dance and came up<br class="gmail_msg">
with some little rhyming phrases that I could use for some of the calls.<br class="gmail_msg">
I didn't do all of this right away, but my second attempt at calling a<br class="gmail_msg">
square, with a simpler dance, went much better.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
I hope this is helpful.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
Jonathan<br class="gmail_msg">
-----<br class="gmail_msg">
Jonathan Sivier<br class="gmail_msg">
Caller of Contra, Square, English and Early American Dances<br class="gmail_msg">
jsivier AT illinois DOT edu<br class="gmail_msg">
Dance Page: <a href="http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html" rel="noreferrer" class="gmail_msg" target="_blank">http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html</a><br class="gmail_msg">
-----<br class="gmail_msg">
Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?<br class="gmail_msg">
A: It depends on what dance you call!<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
On 2/4/2017 11:26 AM, Amy Cann via Callers wrote:<br class="gmail_msg">
> It's a friendly low-key local community dance, and they know I'm mainly<br class="gmail_msg">
> a contra caller, so the potential for hurled tomatoes is low -- but I<br class="gmail_msg">
> still want to not stink too much.<br class="gmail_msg">
><br class="gmail_msg">
> Any suggestions for dance choices or thought-habit adjustments?<br class="gmail_msg">
><br class="gmail_msg">
> Back to scribbling on my 3x5 cards and re-reading Lloyd Shaw...<br class="gmail_msg">
><br class="gmail_msg">
> Amy<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
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</blockquote></div>