The square

Eight dancers, four couples

A square is eight dancers in four couples. The couples stand on the four sides of the square, each couple side by side, facing inwards.

The innermost part of the floor — a two-dancer-wide cross through the middle — stays clear. Almost every call is people walking into that space, doing something in it, and coming back out to a place. Because the middle is where the work happens, most calls are described in terms of it.

The four positions

Stand in the square and look around. The four couples occupy the four positions: north, south, east and west of the centre. Each position is home to one couple for the whole tip.

Couples are numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. Couple 1 is the couple whose back is to the caller, and the numbers then run to Couple 1's right: 2, 3, 4, all the way round. See Couples and positions.

Heads and Sides

The two couples facing toward or away from the caller are the Heads. The two couples standing perpendicular — across the hall — are the Sides.

C = Caller, H = Heads, S = Sides:

        H  H
        H  H
   S S          S S
   S S          S S
        H  H
        H  H
             C

Heads and Sides is the oldest way of saying "these four dancers" and it is still the most common one. The manual is emphatic about one thing: you keep the identity you had when you first squared up, all the way through the tip, even if you finish up standing in somebody else's position.

Full detail, including the tricky cases, is in Naming the dancers.

Boys and Girls

Within a couple, the dancer who squared up on the left is a Boy; the dancer on the right is a Girl.

This is a role, not a statement about who you are. The manual is explicit: whatever the actual genders in the square, the left-side dancer plays the Boy's part and the right-side dancer plays the Girl's part. Modern teaching and choreography mostly avoid gender entirely, and where a call does depend on it, it is because the call needs four particular dancers.

Older material — and many callers — say Men and Women, or Gents and Ladies. Both are the same thing. This book teaches the 2026 words.

Couples: proper and improper

A couple standing side by side is Normal when the Boy is on the left and the Girl on the right. When the Girl is on the left, the couple is Sashayed (or Half-Sashayed — you will hear both).

The distinction matters because a Normal Couple is the starting formation for several calls. See Arrangements and gender.

At home

When the square is arranged as it was when you started — every couple in its own position, facing in, everyone in sequence — dancers say they are at home, or that the square is a Static Square. It is the resting state, and every tip returns to it.

The distinction between "a Static Square" (the arrangement) and "Squared Set" (that arrangement in a particular state of sequence) is a real one, and it is explained in Sequence and relationship.

Next