Flutterby™! : Singing call 2015-08-26 13:38:28.985041+00

Singing call

2015-08-26 13:38:28.985041+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

My singing call at the Ken Ritucci Caller School student dance in Sunnyvale, Sunday a week ago.

#Comment Re: Singing call made: 2015-08-26 18:08:32.751717+00 by: markd

#Comment Re: Singing call made: 2015-08-26 19:31:36.73312+00 by: Dan Lyke

Thanks! I've been working on that singing voice, and I'm still self-conscious about it.

Singing calls are generally planned ahead, if only because the pattern has to fit in the number of beats. I prefer when callers put in at least two different figures, but I'm still working out my timing and it makes a huge difference to how the floor moves, so I stuck with a very simple figure for all 4 cycles of the partner rotation[1]

Sometimes I'll rework on the fly if people are too far behind, but we'd pre-simplified that one while working out the sequence, and you can hear from my timing that the floor wasn't always on the same beats I was and I was trying to adjust so that I wasn't calling too far ahead of them. And they can make up a few beats on the promenade if I put 'em too far out.

I've also started writing singing calls at the requisite numbers of beats with "get-outs" early, something that puts the dancers in the same place, but faster, in case they're not keeping up.

[1] Two types of square dance calls, "patter" and "singing". Patter are free-form, I generally write 'em down ahead of time because it's nice to get people home at full speed, and sometimes the guide square breaks down, and tracking multiple squares is hard, but I will occasionally call off-the-cuff, and some callers are better at this than others.

Singing calls are in 7 64 beat phrases, ABBABBA, where A may or may not be the same all 3 times, but brings the dancers back to the same spot, and B rotates the "girl"/"lady" dancer to another "boy" (who always goes home to the same spot), usually the next to the right. Often the pattern is "Heads do X twice, A, Sides do X twice", but it's nice when it's "Heads do X, heads do Y, bridge (A), Sides do X, sides do Y".