About gay square
dancing, links to
relatted sites
Movies
What's it all about? There are some movies available on YouTube.
Here are links to some.
Questions and
misconceptions
How does gay square dancing differ from straight square
dancing?
While the basic
calls are same there are several differences.
First of all, you
don't need to have a
partner.
(Many straight clubs only accept couples.)
You have the
choice of whether to be a
lead or a follow.
(In most straight clubs your role is fixed by your sex.)
There's more
flair, more styling, much
more energy.
Put another way - a lot more fun!
(And it's not just us that think that -- sometimes when dancing with
straight club members they start adopting our styling!)
There's an
interesting discussion on such
differences in the
article
on gay
square dancing
in the wikipedia.
Do I have to dress funny?
No! Our club -
as with all gay
square dance clubs - there are no dress codes or
restrictions.
Just be comfortable. (There are some clothing optional dances at some
fly-is but that's another matter...)
Yeah, but it's all country music right?
Nope. There's
all kinds. It
just depends what the caller feels like playing. Usually
there's
a mixture - rock, pop, country, oldies, bagpipe music (an oxymoron?),
yodelling - whatever. You don't get much Gregorian Chanting
but
that would probably work...
I can't dance
Says who? If you
can move and
follow simple instructions you'll do fine.
Suppose I screw up?
You
will. Everyone
does. It matters not.
I hate having fun, I hate being with
friendly people, I
can't stand anyone enjoying anything
Ah.
Maybe this activity isn't for
you then.
What's a fly-in?
Whereas most moderately
large cities
might have several straight square dancing clubs, gay ones
are
relative few and far between. So, in order to enjoy larger
dances
a club will host a fly-in. This is an event usually lasting
two
or three days. There will often be two or sometimes three
callers, there will be dancing at various levels,
there may
be workshops; it varies.
What may surprise you is how far people will travel to attend
these
events. At last year's Toronto fly-in there were folks from
Califoria, Alabama and British Columia for example. (
We get around, too.)
This
should tell you something -- it's a heckova lot of fun!
And once a year there's a convention - a fly-in on steroids.
That's quite something.
Links
Square Dance Associations
International Association of Gay Square Dance
Clubs
www.iagsdc.org
This is the umbrella group of the Gay Square Dancing group.
Eastern Ontario Square and Round Dance
Association
www.magma.ca/~eosarda
Border Boosters Square and Round Dance
Association
www.geocities.com/sqdancer_ca/
Western Square Dancing (DoSaDo.com)
www.dosado.com
Callerlab
www.callerlab.org
Intended for callers, this organization is useful for dancers too since
it contains the official definitions of the calls.
Definitions
Like
most square dance clubs we use the calls standardized by Callerlab (see
above). To access the definitions of all the calls, go
to
http://www.callerlab.org
and
on the left hand side select Dance Programs and then select the
appropriate level. For example, selecting
Maintream
will show you links to the list of mainsteam calls and their
definitions.
Animations
An
alternative way of learning or reviewing calls is viewing animations.
Some use circles and squares, some have pictures of
people. Here are links to some:
- Japan
Square Dance Association animations
basic, mainstream and plus.
- Noriko
Takahashi, has animations
of basic, mainstream, plus and A-1
- TAMinations
is provided by the Tam Twirlers of Mill Valley, California
- The
Open Squares club in Germany have animations
of Basic, Mainsteam Plus and A-1
- The animated square dance CD website have some online as well as available on a cd
