Conventions — how this book is laid out
Read this once and every page afterwards looks familiar.
One definition, one place
Every term is defined once, on the page named in the glossary, and linked everywhere else. Call pages do not re-explain a concept; they link to it. That is why a call page can be 40 lines and still make sense on its own — the words it uses are one click away.
The call card
Every call follows the same shape, so you always know where to look:
| Section | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| At a glance | starting formation → ending formation, timing in beats, and the teaching unit |
| Animation | the call danced, from its starting formation to its ending one |
| What you do | plain-language instruction, in the second person |
| Timing | the beats, and what that means in music |
| Styling | hands, arms, posture — how it should look |
| Restrictions | where the manual says the call may not start, or what it may not follow |
| Common faults | what beginners get wrong, and the fix |
| Where you meet it | the classes that teach it |
| Related calls | links, never repetitions |
| Also called / formerly | the other words you will hear in a hall |
A call with no animation says why instead — see below.
Reading the animations
Every animation is drawn looking straight down at the floor, with the walls of the square square to the page. Board +y is up the page. The faint grid behind the dancers is the floor, drawn one unit per square, and a dancer is one square wide — so the spacing between dancers can be read off the grid rather than guessed. Dancers stand two squares apart in a squared set or a wave, and one square apart in a tidal wave or a promenade.
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| circle | a Girl (the dancer who squared up on the right of a couple) |
| square | a Boy (the dancer who squared up on the left of a couple) |
| the dark wedge on each marker | which way that dancer is facing — drawn near-black so it reads at a glance |
| thick grey line | a joined handhold between two dancers |
| coloured trail | where that dancer has travelled so far; the trail grows as the call is danced |
| number inside a marker | the dancer's home position (1–8), when the call begins from a full squared set |
Shape and facing are always drawn, so nothing depends on colour alone.
Colour is by couple — 1 red, 2 blue, 3 green, 4 gold — whenever the call begins from a full set of eight, so you can see at a glance who belongs with whom. Many calls are defined for only half the set: Star Thru from Facing Couples involves four dancers, and there is no home couple to point at. Then colour falls back to gender and no numbers are shown. The picture is still correct; it simply does not claim to know something it cannot know. Guessing a couple number from where somebody happens to be standing would be inventing identity, and that is exactly what a diagram must never do.
When a call has no animation
Some calls in the 2026 program have no animation yet — there is nothing to draw them from — and those are taught from the definition alone. Each of them says so rather than leaving a blank space, and the animations index lists them together, so you can always tell a missing animation apart from a missing you.
An animation is also shown only where it agrees with the 2026 definitions. A moving picture of an older version of a call is worse than no picture at all, so where the two disagree the animation is withheld and the page says so.
Quoting the manual
Text in quotation marks attributed to the manual is CALLERLAB's own wording, reproduced under the permission printed in sources and attribution. Everything else is written for this book.
Words this book uses deliberately
The 2026 manual says Boys and Girls. Older material, and many callers, say Men and Women, Gents and Ladies. Both are listed on each call's "also called" line, because you will hear both. The book teaches the 2026 word.