Erik Barry Erhardt wrote:
> This is Lloyd Shaw's index of dances.
Jonathan Sivier wrote:
> I'm assuming that the Docey Doe in this dance isn't just a dos-a-do,
> but is a more complex set of movements. I know I've done some
> similar figures in the past, but is there an explanation for this
> somewhere on the web site?
One of the links in the index is to a “Docey-Doe and Visiting Couple Square.” The instructions for the docey-doe are at the bottom of that page. Those instructions (which I suspect are the work of Bill Litchman) include some variations
and a helpful timing note for callers.
One caveat: Where it says “The instructions… in ‘Cowboy Dances’… are not quite correct,” it would be more accurate to say that the instructions in Shaw’s book and those on the LSF webpage describe two related-but-different versions of the
docey-doe. And I wouldn’t say, referring to the first move, that one version is the reverse of the other; they’re just different.
Brief descriptions: In Shaw’s book, from a circle of four, the ladies pass left shoulders and face partner. On the webpage, from a circle of four, ladies do a rollaway with their opposite to face partner. In both versions, continue with
left hand to partner, pull by, right hand around opposite, courtesy turn with partner.
The rollaway version seems to be more fun and also easier to teach and to understand. It’s the version in every film or video that I’ve seen that includes a docey-doe. (I suspect that Shaw and/or his teenage dancers came up with the rollaway
version, too late for it to be included in Cowboy Dances. The book did have a print life of more than a decade, during which the description could conceivably have been changed; but there was a long series of photographs illustrating the figure, and perhaps
the publisher balked at reshooting them.)
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century
(to be published Summer 2017)