Shamu was born this day in 1985 in Orlando, Florida. She was the first killer whale to be born in captivity and survive. Her place of birth was Sea World.
A good day to do fish songs: Three Little Fishes, Fisherman’s Luck, Mack the Knife (sharks, anyone?). I can’t think of any songs about killer whales, or even whales.
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Gershwin composed an amazing number of songs. There are square dance versions on Summertime (from Porgy and Bess) and I Got Rhythm.
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I think every caller has a pet peeve (and if you read the sd-callers mailing list, you’ll agree with me). Here’s your chance to exercise your pet peeve. Hate highland fling dosados? Then spend this week calling dosado variations that’ll force those intransigent dancers to do dosados right, by golly. Dislike the way dancers circle to a line? Call “circle to a line and roll…” That’ll get ’em!
My personal pet peeve is grand square…I hate the three-step or two-step grand square. I try to always hit the phrase for the call (if I can’t, I won’t call it; I’ll substitute something else). But I’m not sure what else I can do to force the issue. For those of us who are technically inclined, there are reasons for not calling “Grand Square 6 steps”. I think I’ll just announce that it’s pet peeve week and ask dancers to indulge me…they can dance it if they really think about it.
Elvis sings on The Ed Sullivan Show, but is only shown from the waist up.
Yet another day to feature Elvis songs. If we work at it, we might find some Elvis connection for every day of the year.
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I can’t think of any square dance relevance, but it seemed like such a weird thing to have a special day for that I had to list it. I suppose you could do Chuck Berry records, but that’s a real stretch.
This is a no-brainer; there are enough country music square dance singing calls to fill up the whole month.
Lots of square dance songs: El Paso City, White Sport Coat…I think there’s a Marty Robbins medley.
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Presidential candidate Richard Nixon goes on Laugh-In and says, “Sockit to me!”
If you’re calling A2 or higher, this would be an appropriate day to feature the C2 calls Sock It To Me and Here Comes the Judge. You can do this at A2 by starting out with “Prefer the end [boy or girl, as appropriate] for an out roll circulate, and then give the name of the call.
How about breaking out the old “one now, one later” routine. Then you could procrastinate on the later, all the way to the singing call…or the next tip…
I did a quick web search on “one now one later” and found only one square dance reference: Square Dance Teaching Points – Glossary / NOL.
The basic idea is you say something like “Do two scootbacks, one now and one later.” The dancers do one scootback. A little while later, you say “It’s later!” and the dancers are supposed to remember to do the other scootback.
You could do Grandfather’s Clock, ‘Round the Clock Loving, and various time related songs (Any Old Time, Every Second, Every Minute, among others).
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