Hi Jim,
My original post was just pointing out that various forms of calling may have developed in parallel on both sides of the Atlantic.
But I agree absolutely with you that some form of calling almost certainly took place outside of formal balls.
It is very sad that we have so little information about how a Dancing Master did their teaching or, indeed, about so many other aspects of the dance in past centuries.
Nearly all the documents we have are either published books or decriptions of formal events.
I have studied the history of other forms of dance and find that whenever someone publishes a book on dance to make a profit they are highly likely to standardise, simplify and "improve". The same goes for Dancing Masters; to teach large numbers of the general public (often with limited motor skills or cognitive abilities) then you have to standardise and simplify if you want to make a living.
I found the Lovelace Manuscript http://contrafusion.co.uk/lovelace.htm to be a breath of fresh air. It is a handwritten document, presumably someone's personal notes. It contains style points and variants for dances published by Playford, sometimes giving a very different feel to the dance.
Some examples:
"every man shall turne his mayde as long as he please, on way, and then backe agayine, the other way
then all men and woemen turne round as before as fast as they can"
Instead of Lead Down: "the first man shall take his woeman by both hands and shall leade her down side long, allmost to ye bottome, very quickly,"
"if you please, you may turne her arme over her head, and salute her, if you like your mate, when you turne her above, and below;"
And what about all the dancing that went on outside formal events? We know nothing of what happened "downstairs" or in the villages. It seems highly likely to me that they danced and had fun, and that it involved some form of calling.
Happy dancing,
John
John Sweeney, Dancer, England john@modernjive.com 01233 625 362 http://www.contrafusion.co.uk for Dancing in Kent