I’m off at my mom’s ranch this week for the annual Thanksgiving eating ritual, but not before calling a dance in Palo Alto for the El Camino Reelers. It was interesting…a wide mix of abilities ranging from just-completed-Basic-on-Tuesday to been-dancing-in-the-high-C’s-for-years. It was a multi-level dance, with about two Plus tips for every class-level tip and an A2 tip near the end. Programming these kinds of dances is difficult, I think; peaks and valleys are harder to achieve when the level’s changing with almost every tip. I pulled out the “special shapes” thing again…my excuse this time was that it was a Harvest Dance, meaning an autumn dance, and fall in Albuquerque means The Balloon Fiesta, which leads to special shapes.

Because there were so many C-type dancers, I did the O’s, Butterflies, Hourglasses, and Galaxies perfunctorily and then moved right into Sausages and Eggs. It turns out that the square dance guru, Stewart Kramer, who’s an ECR member and who was at the dance, is credited with the “Slice the Sausage” call. He says Bill Davis is actually the perpetr…I mean inventer of the whole egg/sausage thing. But I wish I’d known about Stewart’s connection during the dance!

And of course, there’s a lot of interesting info in the guru’s comments.