Re: [Callers] ACK! First time calling night of *squares* -- any last minute advice?

Here is my experience in calling squares for the first time, for what it is worth. I had been calling contras for several years and thought I would like to expand my repertoire to include some squares. I chose what I thought was a fairly straightforward square that had been done by the local group, called by other callers, several times in the past. While the dance itself (Texas Star with the Alamo Ring break) wasn't especially hard, what I hadn't taken into account was that there would be a lot of other things for me to be dealing with in calling a square which don't generally occur in contras. So my first attempt at calling a square didn't go very well. Here are some of the things I found I needed to deal with in squares that I hadn't encountered in contras. If there are multiple squares they won't all keep in sync the way contra sets typically do. So one square will have finished promenading home, while another will still be working on getting there. So you may need to tell the one group to do something like swing at home until the others catch up. The more squares there are the more this will be the case. The chances are good you will get off from the music. In contras the dances and music go together very well, but some squares don't fit the music as well and even when they do the fact that some squares may lag behind means you will often end up being off from the music. At first I worried about this a lot and trying to keep track of that and keep things with the music was one more thing overloading my mental resources when I was trying to call squares. So I decided to not worry about it and free up those resources to think about other things. To do that I intentionally get off the music right at the start by doing an intro that takes less than 64 beats. Something like "Circle left, circle right, into the center and back, do it again." Then I can start the dance proper and not worry about being off the music. Of course that leaves the problem of knowing where you are in the music for purposes of ending the dance and music at the same time. This has taken some practice and I'm still not great at it, but most bands are good about ending on a given signal, if you let them know beforehand. It was also a surprise, and challenge, to me that I had to keep calling the whole time. I should have seen that coming. As you know the longer you keep calling a dance the more likely you are to make a mistake. So having to call squares all the way through meant I was making more errors. I think that is where patter calling comes in. If you have a nice little rhyming phrase for something you can recite it without really having to think about it and will, hopefully, make fewer mistakes. So what I ended up doing was choosing an even easier dance, Sheehan's Reel by Roger Whynot, and a very straightforward break. I deliberately got off the music at the start of the dance and came up with some little rhyming phrases that I could use for some of the calls. I didn't do all of this right away, but my second attempt at calling a square, with a simpler dance, went much better. I hope this is helpful. Jonathan ----- Jonathan Sivier Caller of Contra, Square, English and Early American Dances jsivier AT illinois DOT edu Dance Page: http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html ----- Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? A: It depends on what dance you call! On 2/4/2017 11:26 AM, Amy Cann via Callers wrote: