Here are some highlights of Jerry Story's dance
- From columns, circulate once and a half, center six walk and dodge. From each dancers point of view it is just like Walk and Dodge from a box circulate.
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Jerry called the following from a squared set
Heads right and left thru (Heads) Veer left. Heads should have stepped up to a two-faced line. See Veer Left from Facing Couples
sequence diagram -
Jerry called the following from a squared set
Heads Right and Left Thru Lead Left Veer Right Bend the Line Lead Left (not called from a static square)
sequence diagram - In a Lead Right couples end up facing the wall to their right. In a Lead Left they end up facing the wall to their left
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Jerry called the following from a squared set
Heads Lead right (dancers end in a eight chain thru formation) Everybody Lead right (dancers end in lines facing out)
Of course many dancers veered instead because that is the call that usually follows a Lead. Listen before you leap! - Jerry attempted to call all Plus calls during the evening omitting only Linear Cycle, Spin Chain the Gears and Spin Chain and Exchange the Gears. In particular he went over variations of Crossfire, Peel the Top(from a Z formation), Point-to-point Diamonds and Teacup Chain
- Called Crossfire from lines facing out which required that the centers do a partner trade (they were facing in the same direction) and end in a 1/4 tag formation instead of the usual right-hand columns
- Formed a Z-formation by doing the first part of a Crossfire (centers trade, end cross fold). The second part is for the centers to extend.
- After a Peel Off from right hand columns one trailer rolled (incorrectly) toward the center of the formation but ended up in the correct final position. Jerry commented that if he had called a Roll next that dancer would turn the wrong way.
- A Peel Off involves a leader and a trailer who are separated by some distance. After the Peel Off they should end up on the imaginery line that is halfway between them. The leader has to roll and step to that line and the trailer has to step to that line and roll.
- Jerry commented that sometimes flow is lost during a call. See sequence diagram for an example using Crossfire. If only the first part of the Crossfire had been done (see 8. above) then all dancers would have flow going into a Peel Off.
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Teacup Chain has the following variations
- Head ladies center from a squared set.
- All ladies center from a squared set
- All ladies right from a squared set
- Head ladies center from lines facing in.
- He also had everybody Half-Sashay so genders changed roles
- To the uninitiated, Teacup Chain appears to be a bunch of dancers milling about in the middle of the square. It is essentially a drunken "ladies promenade around inside." And it seems to be an exception to Ken Burke's claim that "square dancing is all about me" since so many other dancers are involved. However, let's try removing all dancers except one as follows. This shows how a dancer can go into "me mode"
- Replace all men by poles
- Put a pole in the middle of the square
- Use right hand to grab the pole in the center of square
- Turn 3/4 around the center pole to the corner pole
- Use left hand to turn around corner pole to opposite pole
- Use right hand to turn around opposite pole into the center of the square
- Use left hand to grab the center pole
- Turn 1 1/4 around center pole to the left hand pole
- Use right hand to turn around the left-hand pole
- Use left hand to turn around the partner pole to return to original position.
- Use right hand to grab the corner pole
- Turn around the corner pole to the the center of the square
- Use left hand to grab the center pole
- Turn 1 1/4 around the center pole to the opposite pole
- Use right hand to turn around the opposite pole to the left hand pole
- Use left hand to turn around the left hand pole into the center of the square
- Use right hand to grab the center pole
- Turn 3/4 around the center pole to the partner pole
- Use left hand to turn around the partner pole to return to the original position.
- To do a Beer Mug Chain in a pole dance, replace all "Ladies" with "Men", "right" with "left" and "left" with "right."
| Squared set | Lines facing in |
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Neat analogy with the poles. (Hey, want to sell that coat rack?) You haven't posted for last nite's class yet, but wanted to comment while my memory was fresh. (I'm basically whining, so plz bear with me.) Regarding Load the Boat: If I'm not mistaken, Jerry called this while we were in a tidal wave. He called it, like, 3 times in a row. But the repetition DID NOT HELP, as I was totally lost from the get-go. My brain kept saying, "How on earth could this be called from a tidal wave!?" I just fumbled through. We spent a good amount of time stepping through the "regular" load-the-boat, but for this bizarre variation, we had zero preparation and zero stepping thru. Hell - I couldn't even tell whether I was an "end" or a "center". When I did finally land on the end (the absolute end), and had to pass 3 dancers in my circumnavigation, it turned out I was supposed to count the lady whose hand I was holding initially as one of the 3! I say this is dirty pool! Come on -- how are we supposed to figure this out on the fly? I havent looked at taminations yet, cuz I want to wallow in my own self-pity a little while longer!! And bitch at the Gods of square dance for concocting this malformed mutant of a Plus call! If this is what Dancing by the Definition means, man, I don't know. It definitely takes the fun out things. The other thing that irked me was the way "Hinge" was used. In a "Linear cycle" the first thing to do is hinge. But if you're holding your partner's left hand with your right, Hinge in not a hinge anymore. Not in my opinion. It supposedly becomes a partner half-trade. Hunh? Again, this is counter-intuitive. It can't be incorporated into your "body memory;" rather, it must be analyzed intellectually in order to execute. Which is impossible to do when you're moving at speed in an actual dance. There's not enuf time. Finally, as usual, there were people pushing, pulling and bitching during the dance. I was the lead in the conga line on Exchange the Gears, and I was doing the move correctly, but the person behind felt it necessary to comment on my turn at the end: saying it was not "sharp enough." Yikes. Are we really that picky!? Another person told me I was supposed to be passing right shoulders on the pass thru of Linear Cycle. But I'm certain he was wrong, since we were doing a "left-sided" Linear Cycle, which requires a left-shoulder pass. Again, picky, picky. Dancing shouldn't be this painful!
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