THE TIMES SQUARES

What is Modern Western Square Dancing?

In traditional, or Eastern square dancing, one generally encounters a fairly small number of different dances, with the choreography for a particular song varying only a little from place to place or with time. Thus, dances in the traditional repertoire become well known; if you dance often you will remember them from dance to dance. Also, they tend to be repetitive, with each of the four couples executing, in turn, the same figure. Often, the caller will teach or walk through the figure before dancing it. For all these reasons it is easy for someone with little or no square dance experience to participate.

Modern Western square dancing is a standardized outgrowth of this, which was created by Callerlab, an organization of square dance callers. For example, the entry level Callerlab program, Basic, consists of about 50 calls, including such familiar ones as "dosados," "allemande left," and "right and left grand." Because the dancers are expected to already know the calls on the announced program, teaching is generally not done at a dance. The caller simply calls a sequence of the moves which the dancers are then expected to execute, and a hallmark of Modern Western square dancing is "patter" or "hash," where the caller essentially makes up the dance on the spot with little repetition.

A drawback to this system is the requirement that the dancers attend lessons to learn the calls on a program before being able to attend open dances. The advantage is that, once you know a square dance program, you can dance it anywhere in the world; all of the thousands of Modern Western Square dance clubs adhere to Callerlab standardization. Outside the United States, calling is always done in English.

Callerlab has defined six programs: Basic, Mainstream, Plus, Advanced, Challenge-1, and Challenge-2. Each of these programs includes all the calls from the prior programs as well. By Advanced and Challenge the dancer is expected to know hundreds of calls and, in addition, concepts, which modify how the calls are executed; dancing at these programs provides mental as well as physical exercise. For more information on Modern Western Square Dancing, try the definitive site www.dosado.com

This page was written by the late Sheldon Green. He is sorely missed.

The term "IAGSDC" is a trademark of the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs.

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