To my knowledge, it depends on the dance; i.e. how many beats has the choreographer allowed for. Some dances are timed to 2 beats zig, 2 beats zag. Some are timed for 4 beat zig and 4 beat zag.

I believe that "Cows are Watching" (just looked online) and  Weave the Line, as examples, are the latter.

I can't recall the name of a dance with the similar zig/zag into a gents alle L as "Cows" that, I think, has 2 beats/zig timing.

Ken
 
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:43:36 -0500
From: Jerome Grisanti via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
To: Tom Hinds <twhinds@earthlink.net>
Cc: "callers@lists.sharedweight.net" <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Subject: Re: [Callers] ???? Looking for Author of Dance -dancers
        adjust
Message-ID:
        <CAD6SnUQMse394aS9QSQ4XnxWyoGW79J1epej29RAS4c=NZQ9bA@mail.gmail.com>
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I tend to think of the zig as four beats and the zag as four more. Four
total would be zesty or rushed, depending on the crowd and music.

Jerome



On Friday, March 24, 2017, Tom Hinds via Callers <
callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> I believe that zig left, zag right normally takes 4 beats.  If the dancers
> zag a little farther so men can easily take a left hand that would take an
> additional 2 beats for a total of 6 counts.  I'll confirm the timing this
> Saturday.
>
> For me there's this issue of how much we ask the dancers to adjust.  It
> seems that asking dancers to adjust is common in English and perhaps less
> common in contra.
>
>
> Tom
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