On 6/26/2015 6:21 AM, Read Weaver via Callers wrote:

Are you asking about grapevine step? A twisting step, where you alternate the right foot going in front of and behind the left as you walk sideways. It’s how circles (of 4 or 8) are done in modern western square dancing, and in the last several years increasingly seen, to the dismay of all right-thinking people, on contra dance floors.

I used to see lots of grapevine step in circle of four on the contra dance floor when I started contradancing in the SF Bay Area in the 1980s. I haven't seen very much of it in the last ten years, so interested it's making a comeback where Read can see it (presumably Boston area).

What I have seen more lately is in big circles (like circle mixers or contra-set-turns-into-an-oval) and some people flip back and forth to face the people on either side of them alternately, which I read as being more about the upper body than the feet. (I don't like it that much; it can leave me in the position where the people on either side of me are trying to face me at the same time and away from me at the same time and I can't play with one without snubbing the other.)

--Alan