Over on the square dancing mailing list, they’re talking about renaming square dancing again. I got a little riled up by a post by the CALLERLAB Foundation’s marketing expert, James Hensley. Here’s what I wrote:

on 11/14/00 5:35 PM, James Hensley at cmarkets@earthlink.net wrote:

> A key problem we have here
> at the Foundation is trying to ‘gather’ all the components of our “Folk
> Dance Group” under one, usable, acceptable and marketable name for purposes
> of presentation. When we go to corporate sponsors (or for ads, public
> relations purposes) we need to not have to say, “Square, Round, Contra,
> Line, Clogging, English Traditional, etc, etc,” as part of our descriptive
> name.

Our hubris in this area is amazing. Modern western square dancing is not
part of most folk dance organizations and festivals. I’ve looked at lots of
websites describing folk dance festivals; these festivals include
international folk dance, contra dancing, traditional squares, English
country dancing and even swing dancing…but not MWSD. I don’t think we’re
legitimate spokespeople for all the myriad of dance forms that make up folk
dancing; in fact, many folk-oriented people do not consider MWSD to be a
folk activity because of its heirarchical, legislated nature.

> there is a caller in Texas that calls
> it “Geomotion” (since all the figures, squares, diamonds, circles, boxes,
> etc are geometric in shape)

Geomotion is used by Paul Galburt (http://bsd.ideaquest.com/geomotion/) as
a name for a computer program featuring a form of two couple square dancing
designed to introduce non-square dancers to the game of square dancing. I
think it’s a neat name…but it’s probably trademarked.

Nobody’s written back, but that happens to me a lot. Besides Geomotion, other suggested names are Team Dance, Sport Dance, Pattern Dance, American Folk Dance (and what about square dancers in other countries), National Folk Dance (sure, and what about the national folk dances of other countries), and Modern Western Dancing. The idea behind all this is to get rid of the dread “square” with all its negative connotations, at least for those of us of a certain generation.

So I stuck a few things into Google to see what would come up. TeamDance is interesting…a few photos of dance competitions (a country dance, Native American dance), a couple of foreign language pages (Japanese, German), and, most intriguingly, a German page on a Yorkie site involving dog dancing.

SportDance: there are “SportDance” competitions which involve aerobic, step, and hip-hop dancing (Triple-A), and a there’s a ‘SportDance’ club in Uppsala, but mostly “sportdance” is used in naming .html pages dealing with DanceSport. DanceSport, of course, is the new name for ballroom dancing, and will, I think, be an Olympic “sport” in Athens (sorry for the quotes…I guess if Ice Dancing can be considered a sport, why not Ballroom Dancing?). At any rate, there is an International DanceSport Federation, with a spiffy website and a nice professionally-designed logo.

Here’s a quote from a press release about DanceSport inclusion in the closing ceremonies of the Sidney Olympics:

DanceSport rivals the ice-skating sports for telegenic appeal. In addition, it has the powerful advantage that it is one of the few sports that has 100% gender parity and offers women exactly the same sport opportunities as men, right down to competing with men in the same events and on the same playing surface.

Hmmm…gender equity and television appeal…so that’s how they decide what activities get included in the Olympics…

Anyway, back to SportDance…I found out more that I really wanted to about Svetlana, a 35-year-old Russian woman whose favorite sport is sportdance (aerobika), and who wants to marry a westerner so much that she’s put herself on bunches of websites like RussianWife.net and LovePlace.com. I’ll bet she’d learn to square dance if the right guy approached her…

Here’s a great name for a Thanksgiving weekend dance: the ButterBall. Also, a great idea: a one-day, 12-hour dance, with different callers (and, since this is a contra dance, bands). (I wonder if the turkey people have problems with this use of a brand name…)

Over on the square dancing mailing list, Clark Baker set up a poll to record the ages of the list participants. So far, there are 57 responses, showing over 50% are between 40 and 60 (I’m pretty close to the middle of that group). While this shows that there are very few young people on the list (8 between 20 and 40), it also shows a skew towards a slightly younger group. If we did a poll at various square dance groups, I’d bet we’d find a majority over 60, whereas in this group, the majority are slightly younger.

A few days ago, I mentioned Erik Hoffman, a caller that Turtle-Bear and I really enjoyed at the Boo Camp dance weekend. I found a few chapters from his book, Contradictions, and he has some interesting things to say about dance, trance, style, and connection. Check it out.

Did you ever get the feeling that square dancers take themselves way too seriously? A few days ago, I cited a couple of articles dealing with rules and obligations of square dancers. Here are some others: Ground Rules of Square Dancing and Duties and Responsibilities. Also, a graduation ceremony that makes me laugh, it takes square dancing so seriously. But maybe it’s a generational thing: the ‘greatest generation‘ vs. the baby boomers. Or maybe it’s just my personality; I’m not particularly fond of ceremonial rituals.

Plugged in “learn to square dance” into Google and got this in the coveted first position: Learn to Square Dance. It’s actually a pretty nice site, although I think the URL is pretty awful (or maybe it’s just because I’m not good at remembering numbers).

Noriko‘s page doesn’t show up on the first couple of pages from Google, although it does show up as a link from Lynette’s Challenge site.

I hate frames. I’d like to cite this page: Information for Non-Dancers, but it’s a page that’s meant to be viewed in a frame context, and all the navigation info is in other frames. So instead, I have to cite Welcome to Mini-Squares and tell you to click on the “To Non-Dancers” item in the menu on the left. Yuck.

But, anyway, the Mini-Squares idea is interesting, although I haven’t heard any follow-up on whether people are successful in introducing their friends. I did come across this site, Learn to Square Dance, in my search on learning to square dance. And a later search on mini-squares revealed these results:

Mini-Squares Results: Only 1 new dancer completed the 4-week Mini-Squares session we hosted in July and another new dancer completed the 4-week session held in August. Not many members took advantage of the fun and challenge of these sessions. Most sessions only had 4 mini-squares so we lost money during both sessions. The club members who supported these recruitment sessions appeared to have fun and found the all-position dancing with only 18 calls challenging.

Listening to new releases on line:

Most record producers don’t seem to have websites. Among those that do, a few provide music samples online.

• Alliance didn’t have anything.
• Blue Square Recordings says it has previews, but doesn’t (clicking on one gives a 404).
• ESP
• Global didn’t have anything.
• Hearties Records doesn’t.
• HiHat has MP3 files that download first and play later.
• Rawhide/Buckskin says they’ll have previews, but they’re not ready yet.
• Rockin M has some RealAudio samples.

While Supreme Audio has a column for a RealAudio preview in their display, very few of the records actually have a RealAudio preview. (On the November tape, only one record has a preview (and that record happens to have an MP3 version, and also was released several months ago).

It looks like Shakedown Records is taking the most advantage of selling MP3s online; they’ve released MP3 versions of records from 1989 and 1992. See Supreme’s online MP3 page.

I think it’s great that Supreme Audio is selling MP3s on line, and I think it’ll be a really good way to get records that have been “out of print” back in the hands of callers. But I don’t get why I should pay the same price for an MP3 as I do for a 45 rpm…the whole point of an MP3 is that the production costs are way down so that the producer (and therefore the user) doesn’t have to pay for pressing vinyl. As Vic Ceder points on on his page about converting vinyl to MP3, MP3 uses a lossy compression algorithm. That means that sound quality is lost when a sound file is converted to an MP3 file. While that loss may not be noticeable if you just play the MP3 file, particularly on our not particularly hifi amplifiers, it will become noticeable if one needs to decompress the file back to some other format in order to change its pitch or tempo and then recompress back to an MP3. It’d be nice if Supreme (or other record distributors) would make an uncompressed version available so those of us who have the bandwidth to grab a 20MB file and the need to alter the original music. Otherwise, if the record is available, I’ll buy the record over the MP3, even though I’ll immediately convert it to a sound file on my computer. If no record is available, I’ll consider the MP3, particularly if I don’t need to alter it.

Square dance promotion on the web: I’m interested in websites that actually try to sell modern western square dancing to the general public. Here’s Jeff Gorbutt’s: Good reasons to join in the craze and come square dancing.

When I first started this weblog, I came across Circle Left, an (at the time) relatively content-free but attractive site on square dancing. It’s been worked on since then, and the databases have been filled in, so it’s no longer content-free. Unfortunately, it’s also no longer as attractive; the owners have decided to put up some advertising on the front page (and other pages too). I guess ya gotta understand people trying to recover their web-hosting costs, but advertising sure junks up a site.

Anyway, the databases (callers, clubs, events) have been populated, although I’m not sure where the data is coming from. The caller directory has 1432 entries as of now…compare that with Vic Ceder‘s 851. That means that it’s unlikely that all the callers listed in Circle Left have requested inclusion. I know I’m in there twice (once as Kris and once as Kristin). The club directory has 2378 entries, but out of the three for New Mexico, two of the clubs no longer exist. Hmmm….the numbers look impressive, but I don’t trust the quality.

Does playing bridge boost the immune system? A new study indicates that playing contract bridge leaves people with higher numbers of immune cells. The researcher said:

“Bridge players plan ahead, they use working memory, they deal with sequencing, initiation and numerous other higher order functions with which the dorsolateral cortex is involved.”

Maybe we need a study that measures T-cells after square dancing.

Here’s a good way to sell square dancing (not!): a page of articles, where two out of three deal with dancer responsibilities and rules. Gee, that’s just what I want in a fun activity: rules and responsibilities. Whoops, the third article, on angels, just happens to be a list of rules for angels. How special.

This stuff on contra dance sound might be of interest, although it’s more relevant to mixing live music. For info more specifically related to using our equipment, see Hilton Audio’s “Sound” Information.

Interested in how contra callers organize their dances? Check out “Methods of organizing dance cards”, a thread on rec.folk-dancing. This has actually segued into a discussion of preparing for a dance (programming in our terms). Different folks prepare differently, ranging from completely written-out programs to extemporaneous programming (just like square dance callers). I find that I call a better dance if I have some plan in mind, even if the plan gets totally revised at the dance. I think it’s sort of like athletes visualizing a performance; it gets me focused on the event. Last week, the dance I called for Duke City Singles went well, and the dancers seemed to have fun with the “special shapes” tip.

As a caller, how would you do a web site to market yourself to non-square dancers for party dances?

Here are some that I’ve found:

• Fred Bouvier. Fred uses square dancing, line (solo) dancing, and other folk dancing for all ages. Fred’s headline: SQUARE/FOLK DANCE CALLER & TEACHER FOR SOUTHERN LOUISIANA AND MISSISSIPPI
• Cliff Brodeur. I’ve mentioned Cliff’s site before; he mentions Square Dancing, Line Dance, Contra, Polkas, Waltzes, and Rock ‘n Roll and talks about birthdays, wedding receptions, anniversaries, picnics and theme parties, fundraising events, and church, school, and youth groups. His start page includes a reference from Pete Seeger. His headline: Have a dance party!
• Dick Crouse. Dick combines both modern square dance calling and party dance calling on one page. He’ll call “easy fun-level western parties” for corporate and private groups, church gatherings, Girl Scout activities, college orientations, and fund raisers.
• Patty Green. Patty’s opening square dance page focuses on the audience: “Are you looking for a different activity for your next pot-luck supper, family reunion, company outing? How about trying a square dance fun night?”

I’m also collecting sites that do a good job of describing square dancing. Here’s Don Crosby’s, with a couple of good quotes:

“An exercise in interpersonal relationships, set in a matrix, rythmic, environment.” –Mike Jacobs

“a physically healthful and mentally stimulating activity involving good fellowship and music”. –Don Crosby

Went to Boo Camp last weekend and did a bunch of contra dancing, along with a few squares. The caller was Erik Hoffman, from the Bay Area, and I thought he was excellent. This was my first experience at a contra dance weekend (of course I’ve been to a gazillion square dance weekends), and it was very different. A lot of it may have been due to the fact that when they say camp, they mean it. Turtle-Bear and I stayed in the women’s building, bunkbeds and all. But a lot of it was just attitude and vibes…my generation vs. my parents’ generation…there were kids running around…people making costumes out of scrap materials…jam sessions… I think the live music makes a big difference. Someone could just start playing an instrument (guitar, fiddle, accordian…whatever) and others would join in, and there would be a dance band. Bayou Seco, one of our favorite dance bands, was there; in fact, that was the main reason that T-B and I decided to go.

So I put “Kris Jensen” into Google to see what would come up. Along with me and a bunch of other folks, I came across references to the Kris Jensen who did the song Torture back in the sixties. That brought back memories; I remember being stoked (that’s probably what I would have said, being a fringey surfer-chick) that someone with my name had a hit single. If you want to hear the song (it was actually pretty dreary), check out Summer of the 60’s and scroll down almost to the bottom of the jukebox. Also check out the surreal beach scene graphic at the top of the page. Poor ol’ Kris…he was truly a one-hit wonder; the only references to him come up in collections of oldies and an occasional trivia question.

Sample lyrics:

You know that I’m crazy ’bout ‘cha
Yet you make me do without ‘cha
Do you mean to hurt
Or don’t you see?

A picture.

I’m sure you all read about the square dancing tractors…now you can own the video.

Why another web ring? Just found Square and Line Dancing in this Century, a web ring started this September. I don’t quite get it…what’s wrong with the current Square and Round Dance Web Ring…or is there a difference between square dancing combined with line dancing and square dancing combined with round dancing. How about if we just call it Geometric Shapes dancing and cover lines, circles, and squares. (It’s amazing what’s on the web…Geometric Dancing already refers to a form of ballet dancing.)

The 52nd National Square Dance Convention has a website now. But take warning: go to that site and you’ll be blasted by the song Oklahoma, with no way to turn it off except by leaving the page. \<rant\>I wish web sites would give me control over sounds. I’m usually listening to my own music or watching TV while browsing and I don’t want imposed (often bad) midi music.\</rant\>

I suppose it’s a good thing that a site called Mr. Happy Feet, covering all kinds of dancing, actually has a section on square dancing. The fact that it’s totally contentless is another issue. But I must admit that I got into the little dance pictures at the top of the page for each dance form.

Well, it’s been a long time…can you say computer game addiction? Actually, that’s not all it’s been, and I haven’t touched Diablo II in over 3 weeks.

I’m teaching a beginners (excuse me, new dancers) class for the Duke City Singles every Friday night. I’m teaching an Advanced class as part of my Advanced workshop series and in conjunction with ACES every Thursday night. I’m on the Board of Directors for the Albuquerque Square Dance Center. So I guess I’ve been keeping busy.

Tonight, I’m not only calling the class, but also calling a dance for Duke City. So I’ve been trying to think of things that would be fun and not too difficult. I’ve come up with a tie-in to the Balloon Fiesta (I know, I know…it was last month, but here in Albuquerque, it’s on our minds all the time). I’m going to teach Squeeze (a simple C1 call), and then we’re going to do a \”Special Shapes\” tip. We can get into hourglasses, galaxies, eggs, sausages, O’s and butterflies. And if I get asymmetric, there are probably some other shapes we could create.

Musicwise, there are some pretty good songs that were at the top of the charts on November 3. In 1944, there was Judy Garland’s The Trolley Song. Also, for you traditional fans, Smoke on the Water was at the top of the country charts. In 1953, You, You, You was at the top, and in 1962, Do You Love Me hit number one. I have square dance recordings of all of these. There were some others that possibly have square dance records; I haven’t looked them up: Theme from the Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys) (1980) and High Cotton (1989).

There’ve probably been a lot of changes to the web since last I checked; guess I’d better go surfin’…