How a call works

Every call in this book has the same three-part shape, and the manual states all three parts explicitly. Once you can see the shape, a call you have never heard of becomes readable.

STARTING FORMATION  →  DANCE ACTION  →  ENDING FORMATION

Starting formation

Where you must already be standing for the call to make sense.

This is the first thing to look at when a call goes wrong. Nine times out of ten the trouble is not the movement — it is that you were not in the formation the call assumes. A call's starting formation is not a suggestion; it is part of the call's definition.

Formations are explained in Formations.

Dance action

What each dancer does. The manual's definition of the action is deliberately precise, and it is what this book quotes on every call page.

Most actions are described relative to where you are and which way you are facing — "the dancer facing out walks in a 180-degree arc" — rather than in absolute compass directions. That is what lets the same call work no matter which wall you are near.

Ending formation

The shape you are in when it is over. Also part of the definition, and also worth checking when something goes wrong: if you know what shape you should be in, you can often find your way there even after losing track.

Some calls end in the same formation they started from, rotated. Some end in a different one entirely. Some — like Star Thru — change a facing pair into a couple.

Timing

Every call has a beat cost. That number is how the caller fits calls to the music, and it is why some calls feel much longer than others. See Timing and music.

Where the definition is not enough

Some calls cannot be written as "do these steps from here". The manual says so, and handles them in three ways you will meet:

• Geometry calls — the end state is defined by identity rather than by a path. Promenade Home is the standard example: you are not told which way to walk; the call is defined as finishing on your own home spot, facing in. If the board does not meet its precondition the call refuses rather than guessing.
• Suffix calls — the action depends on the call before it. Sweep a Quarter is one: it circles a quarter in whichever direction continues the motion that just finished.
• Rules that adjust a call to where you are — the Facing Couples Rule and the Ocean Wave Rule let certain calls start from a formation slightly different from the one named.

Why "where you are" is not "how it looks"

Square dancing describes positions and facings, not compass directions, because the caller can call the same figure from any arrangement of the square. If you rotate the whole square — or reflect it — a correct definition still works, and every dancer still does the same thing relative to their own situation.

This is also why two dancers can be doing the same call and moving in opposite compass directions, and both be right.

Next

• the three-part shape, in one page of music → Timing and music
• the shapes the calls start and end in → Formations
• how a whole dance is assembled from calls → Tips, the unit of the dance