On Tue, Dec 01, 2015, Luke Donforth via Callers wrote: In the normal duple improper formation, a four-person do-si-do is called zigzag, there are lots of dances with that. But that's not what you're doing here. From my POV, that's a four-person gypsy. Or maybe the square dance equivalent would be promenade inside the ring. The key element of do-si-do is facing the same direction during the movement (modulo the contra variant of a spinning do-si-do or square dancing's highland fling) and ending up facing the same direction at the end. I recently saw a square dance caller struggle with explaining Walk Around the Corner (which is square dancing's equivalent of gypsy) and See Saw, failing to mention either of the "easy" ways of getting across the concept: * keep your shoulder toward the person you're walking around * exactly the same thing as an armless allemande Anyway, there are probably several ways to call what you want, but I think that do-si-do ain't one of them. ;-)

From a Right And Left Grand Formation (e.g., after Allemande Left).

Thanks all for the feedback. I appreciate having this list to kick ideas around. While it would be possible for the do-si-dos to happen in two groups of 2; in my opinion that would make this a particularly non-interacting 4x4; as the only whole group of 8 interaction at that point is the circle half way; and thus not worth getting into 4x4 formation for just that. As for my comment about the ladies after the chain. After the give&take - swing, the lines are: w3 m1 w4 m2 m3 w1 m4 w2 When the women chain to the partner, if they went straight up and down, they're ending up back at: w1 m1 w2 m2 m3 w3 m4 w4 after being courtesy turned through 180 degrees. Except the next move is happening in the center, so as w2 and w3 are being courtesy turned, they'll be facing into the center after maybe 140 degrees of rotation; whereas w1 and w4 have to turn about 220 degrees to face into center. As for language, I think I may have muddied the issue; so thank you for demonstrating all the ways that my instructions could be interpreted. Always a learning experience. A handless star/promenade inside/4 person gypsy is not quite what I had in mind, although they're all basically the same path on the floor and certainly what I described. I'd envisioned folks getting to do-si-do with as little or as much twirling as the wanted; but as folks pointed out, the DSD twirl is the opposite direction of the big picture rotation. If I can get dancers to test it, I might describe it as "all four women, do-si-do your opposite woman while dodging the other two" Given that's how I'm thinking of it; the fact that my description involves "dodging" might be a sign it's not such a great idea. The promenade inside or star options might be more timing resilient; although I like the idea of letting folks safely twirl when they want. I'll keep turning it over in my head, and try to get guinea pigs to dance it (there's something that would go viral on youtube...) Thanks for being a community to talk about dancing with :-) Luke _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list Callers(a)lists.sharedweight.net http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net