I get excited when a contra caller says the next dance will be a square, but I hear many groans. As a square dance caller who dances contras, I often inquire as to the why. I think contra dancers do not like squares for multiple reasons. One, they are unpredictable, most are not all active at once, except during breaks, and third, they are seldom called on phrase. Additionally, from a caller's perspective, there is a lot more required to calling squares. The caller is expected in many cases to entertain the dances with his calling style. Patter/chatter are important elements of the call. A good dance can fall flat by lack luster calling. I suggest to anyone interested in squares that they pick up the $20 CD from CDSS that documents the Dare to be Square weekend. The disk contains many hours of MP3 dances and walkthroughs and all the transcribed calls. It is a portable Caller's College! (Thanks to Nils Fredland and many others at CDSS and DTBS) Rich Stafford, CT
________________________________ From: JoLaine Jones-Pokorney <jola...@gmail.com> To: callers-requ...@sharedweight.net; call...@sharedweight.net Sent: Monday, September 9, 2013 8:47 AM Subject: [Callers] Calling squares at contra. Speaking as a dancer here and not a caller, I enjoy a square now and then but I really don't like it when the caller calls two squares back to back. If I sat out the first one, that generally means I have to sit out the next one too. The last time that happened in our community, one of the dancers complained that he had driven two hours to get there and had only gotten two dances in the second half because the caller had called two squares back to back and took a really long time to teach both of them. In my experience, the main reason contra dancers don't like squares is that it takes a long time to get set up, there is a chance you will get left out if you're slow to find a partner and then can't get enough other people to make a square, and that it often takes more teaching time. I don't think it has anything at all to do with the dance itself. So my advice is to call one square in the first half and one square in the second half and find something that can be taught quickly and is interesting and fun. I will happily dance those squares! JoLaine _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list call...@sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
