Tony, An important development lately in West Virginia and with others like Tclaw is what I call Geezerology. They follow the example of all the living older callers they can find. This is different from book study. Some of those older callers who can be found have innovated on the traditional a bit over the years. By tradition I just mean using pre-existing materials instead of creating anything so different it is unrecognizable and unrelated. A how-to workbook for learning is always useful. Exact timings can help. It all has to be relatable, it has to work, and some of it needs to be simple for the new caller. The world is political now. A caller needs to be nice but firm. I bet certain personalities are better for leading. Some folks will say anything into a microphone. But the public tends to be picky. Who is your audience? Do you have more than one? There was a time I would have learned any dance I thought people would enjoy. If you can sell the square dance, you can sell your book! Fred Feild -------- Original message -------- From: "Tony Parkes tony(a)hands4.com [trad-dance-callers]" &lt;trad-dance-callers(a)yahoogroups.com&gt; Date: 8/17/16 1:28 PM (GMT-06:00) To: trad-dance-callers(a)yahoogroups.com Subject: [trad-dance-callers] Re: Is there an emerging SD style? Has it a name? Mo Waddington wrote: <<Are we talking about the same thing though. Barn dance, ONS, square dance, ceilidh are one thing. But some of the things Tony was talking about in the first post (if I remember????) assume more knowledge maybe.>> As Mo may have suspected, we've been talking about two different things in this thread: (1) the eclectic style of square dancing and calling that I've seen emerging over the last 10-20 years, primarily in the contra dance scene, and (2) the world of one-nighters or barn dances, which has always been eclectic to some extent because the simpler the material, the less difference between regional styles and the less it matters which way you give hands. Both (1) and (2) are legitimate expressions of a folk art. My original post was entirely concerned with (1). It was an attempt to find out if others agreed with me that square dancing and calling has become more eclectic, and to find out whether anyone has given this style a name that is worth perpetuating. My impression, after several responses, is that there is no such name in common use. I've just about decided to use "neo-traditional" in my own writing; I don't expect anyone else to follow suit, but I do suspect that anyone reading my words who is familiar with the recent and current dance scene will know what I mean. Tony Parkes Billerica, Mass.