[Callers] ACK! First time calling night of *squares* -- any last minute advice?

[Jonathan Sivier via Callers]

    Here is my experience in calling squares for the first time, for 
what it is worth.

    I had been calling contras for several years and thought I would 
like to expand my repertoire to include some squares.  I chose what I 
thought was a fairly straightforward square that had been done by the 
local group, called by other callers, several times in the past.  While 
the dance itself (Texas Star with the Alamo Ring break) wasn't 
especially hard, what I hadn't taken into account was that there would 
be a lot of other things for me to be dealing with in calling a square 
which don't generally occur in contras.  So my first attempt at calling 
a square didn't go very well.

    Here are some of the things I found I needed to deal with in squares 
that I hadn't encountered in contras.

    If there are multiple squares they won't all keep in sync the way 
contra sets typically do.  So one square will have finished promenading 
home, while another will still be working on getting there.  So you may 
need to tell the one group to do something like swing at home until the 
others catch up.  The more squares there are the more this will be the case.

    The chances are good you will get off from the music.  In contras 
the dances and music go together very well, but some squares don't fit 
the music as well and even when they do the fact that some squares may 
lag behind means you will often end up being off from the music.  At 
first I worried about this a lot and trying to keep track of that and 
keep things with the music was one more thing overloading my mental 
resources when I was trying to call squares.  So I decided to not worry 
about it and free up those resources to think about other things.  To do 
that I intentionally get off the music right at the start by doing an 
intro that takes less than 64 beats.  Something like "Circle left, 
circle right, into the center and back, do it again."  Then I can start 
the dance proper and not worry about being off the music.  Of course 
that leaves the problem of knowing where you are in the music for 
purposes of ending the dance and music at the same time.  This has taken 
some practice and I'm still not great at it, but most bands are good 
about ending on a given signal, if you let them know beforehand.

    It was also a surprise, and challenge, to me that I had to keep 
calling the whole time.  I should have seen that coming.  As you know 
the longer you keep calling a dance the more likely you are to make a 
mistake.  So having to call squares all the way through meant I was 
making more errors.  I think that is where patter calling comes in.  If 
you have a nice little rhyming phrase for something you can recite it 
without really having to think about it and will, hopefully, make fewer 
mistakes.

    So what I ended up doing was choosing an even easier dance, 
Sheehan's Reel by Roger Whynot, and a very straightforward break.  I 
deliberately got off the music at the start of the dance and came up 
with some little rhyming phrases that I could use for some of the calls. 
  I didn't do all of this right away, but my second attempt at calling a 
square, with a simpler dance, went much better.

    I hope this is helpful.

Jonathan
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Jonathan Sivier
Caller of Contra, Square, English and Early American Dances
jsivier AT illinois DOT edu
Dance Page: http://www.sivier.me/dance_leader.html
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Q: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
A: It depends on what dance you call!


On 2/4/2017 11:26 AM, Amy Cann via Callers wrote:
> It's a friendly low-key local community dance, and they know I'm mainly
> a contra caller, so the potential for hurled tomatoes is low -- but I
> still want to not stink too much.
>
> Any suggestions for dance choices or thought-habit adjustments?
>
> Back to scribbling on my 3x5 cards and re-reading Lloyd Shaw...
>
> Amy