While “researching” (read surfing) square dance competitions, I found this article on the decline of mountain community square dances in North Carolina. The whole article is interesting, but I was particularly interested in theories about the decline:

What happened to this rich tradition of mountain square dancing and why did it die out after decades of vitality? I have interviewed many dancers who were active during those heydays of square dancing, and I’ve heard a number of answers. According to Jackie Hyatt, whose husband danced with Soco Gap and who herself was a “square dancer” with the Sylva team, the rise in popularity of the Texas two-step at local dance halls is what put an end to square dancing. Joe Sam Queen suggested that with the coming of rock-and-roll, community socialization became more stratified by age group, thus inhibiting the passing on of traditions to the next generation. Better transportation may have also contributed to the break-up of formerly tight-knit local dance communities, and certainly the lure and addiction to television was not conducive to community interaction or participation.

MWSD seems pretty much an age stratified activity. Sure there are a few teens and twenty-somethings who square dance, but based on my experience, I’d say most square dancers are in their sixties and seventies…that is, the parents of the kids who were listening to rock ‘n’ roll in the 1960’s and 1970’s, when MWSD peaked in popularity. I wonder if MWSD, with its rigid gender roles, dress codes, and rules of behavior, was a reaction to the societal changes that were occurring as the boomers came of age. What do you think?

Keep an eye on this page. It’s under construction now, but at some point we may be able to dress little square dance mannequins in proper square dance attire. Maybe people will be happy dressing dolls on line and won’t force real people to wear the silly clothes.

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The Stanford North American Dance Workshop looks like it would have been fun. I admit to being an eclectic when it comes to dance; I like a little variety.

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According to this rec.folk-dancing thread, CNN Headline News ran a story on contra dancing on October 5. Did anyone happen to see it?

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For more on the continuing MWSD vs. traditional square dance saga, check out this thread on rec.folk-dancing.

Be sure to spread the word about Vic Ceder’s new Clubs database. Through the wonders of modern relational database technology (tongue slightly-in-cheek, but I actually do think it’s pretty cool), the clubs that you call for show up in your listing in Vic’s Caller database. The advantage of a database is that clubs can manage their own listing and don’t have to wait to be added by someone else. The disadvantage is that clubs or callers have to be proactive and list themselves; it’s not like the Open Directory, where there’s an active editor searching out links.

At any rate, the more clubs there are in the database, the more useful it will be. So be sure to tell the appropriate people to sign up.

We’d never see anything like this in MWSD, where hard-core, gender-based clothing is not only preferred, but required at most events.

Here’s a page from Switzerland, detailing the advantages (for men) of skirts over pants. And here’s an article about a girl who won the right to wear pants under her graduation gown (the school had a dress code that specified that girls had to wear dresses under the gown). Apparently, this is not an uncommon issue; here’s an NCLR article about a 2002 Florida case.

How about a Stamp Out Stupid Dress Codes web ring? Looks like it doesn’t exist any more, though; too bad! Also too bad many of the links at the No Tie Zone are broken.

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Here’s a good square dance club name: Stormy-Dyke-Dancers. Almost worth a trip to Germany!

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I’ve added a What’s New button on the left; it’ll list stories, dates, and comments added in the past 14 days. Let me know if you’d like the number of days to be settable or if you’d like me to use cookies to remember when you last visited so I can specifically tailor the what’s new info.

Torture is going to a square dance and being unable to dance.

Yesterday afternoon, I fell on a stupid little step in Albuquerque’s Old Town while taking Andy Finch and his wife around to see the sights and twisted my ankle. I spent the afternoon “rice-ing” it (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and went to the first night of the Wilde Bunch’s Chase the Chile, where I enjoyed the potluck and didn’t particularly enjoy watching other people dancing while I couldn’t (the “rest” part of RICE).

So I’m not dancing…not calling…and I’m not at the workshops this afternoon. Maybe with continued icing and some ibuprofin, I can dance C2 tomorrow morning at the ACES Balloon Fiesta weekend (yet another dance event in Albuquerque that I can’t do).

The CALLERLAB Women in Calling committee just released the results of its member poll on favorite patter records. The records selected are listed at Supreme Audio (here’s a URL that might work: Women In Callng, but I wouldn’t count on it; Bill’s site does complicated things and assigns a session number when you first enter. I’m giving you the URL without the “shopping cart id”.

Anyway, the recordings are listed, but without the actual tallies (most records got one vote, but a few got a couple, and Kayla Rae/Jake (5) and Braveheart (4) got several. Too bad Kayla Rae/Jake is out of print; it’s a real classic.

I took part in the survey, but I noted to Deborah (Deborah Carroll, chairperson of the committee) that my choices change frequently, based on time (I get new favorites all the time), audience (I usually don’t do screaming electric guitars for the dancers at the Palo Duro Senior Center), and purpose (workshop? weekly dance? special dance?). So I’m not sure how useful my selections are.

However, the list got me thinking about collaborative filtering. There were many selections on the list that I use and like, and others that I really don’t like. If I knew who picked the records that I like, I could then look at other choices of that caller and maybe I would like them also. On an anonymous, large-scale basis, these are known as collaborative filtering recommender systems. You can see this at work at Amazon; as you look at books, Amazon will show you other books that people who like the current book have also liked.

What if, as we selected records at Supreme, the system would recommend other records based on our past purchasing history and the purchasing history of others who have purchased similar collections of records. Of course, merely buying a record doesn’t guarantee that I’ll like it once I hear the whole thing, so it would be even better if there were a record-ranking system. After I’ve ranked some records, the system could recommend other records that I might like. To see a non-commercial system at work, check out Jester: The On-Line Joke Recommender. Rate a few jokes and Jester will recommend other jokes. As you rate more, Jester’s recommendations become more precise.

Now that would be cool!

Sometimes just noodling around with google gives interesting results. I googled “square dancing fool” and found:

• A stock market article: Square Dancing! (Rule Breaker) May 3, 1999, which contains this call: “Swing yer stocks round and round, sell the nets and buy the Dows!”
• An article (Deciding to Choose Happiness) about why a self-acknowledged “dancing fool” doesn’t like square dancing and does like contra dancing. Here’s why he doesn’t like squares:
  

  I sensed I did not like squares — but I didn’t know why I didn’t like squares. I listened to others talk, and suddenly something someone said to me long ago became, now, my answer: “I don’t like to be told what to do.” That’s it. In a square, you are at the mercy of the caller — who calls whatever he chooses to call, and you cannot concentrate on dancing, on music. You must listen to a voice that is often so garbled, you don’t know what has been said. Of course I am stating a personal preference. I have had others tell me that what they like about squares is that hesitation — that not knowing, until you are told, what it is you will do. They see the challenge; I see the control.

  And why he does like contras:

  Contras move toward a Silent Dance: you don’t have to listen to anyone else, and you don’t have to listen to yourself. You can lose yourself in the music; the moves are on automatic pilot.

• A collection of posts to rec.folk-dancing on how contra dancing got its name: A Fool’s History of How Contra Dancing Got Its Name. Mantra dancing? Contrail dancing? Revolutionaries?

At a dance a few weeks ago, an enthusiastic couple that had just finished Mainstream lessons showed up. The dance was advertised as MS with announced Plus. I got a strong square together to dance the first tip with the new couple because I wanted them to have a good dance experience. Practically the first thing out of the caller’s mouth was “heads square thru four, touch 1/4, follow your neighbor…”. Bamm! He followed it up with a few more Plus calls. Bamm! We got another couple to sub in for the new MS dancers. The new dancers were the only dancers sitting out.

And we think square dancing is welcoming? Sure it is, if you’ve been doing it for years.

The ASDC president talked to the caller and reminded him (he’d either forgotten or hadn’t read the contract) that the dance was MS and that all Plus tips would be announced. So the next tip, he called “Mainstream”…except he called “interesting” and fast Mainstream…fine if you’ve had a lot of floor time, but difficult or impossible if you’ve just finished lessons. In addition, because he was being “interesting,” he called Eight Chain Thru, Spin Chain Thru, and Fan the Top…all calls recently moved to the Plus list.

Fortunately, I’d stacked a square again, so we were able to get the new dancers through a challenging (even for experienced dancers) tip. And, fortunately, the new dancers weren’t totally discouraged and stayed for the rest of the evening.

But the whole experience brings up questions:

• How do we integrate Mainstream-only dancers into a Plus square dance world?”
• How do we integrate new dancers, whose reaction time is still a little slow, into a square dance world where most dancers have been dancing for years and can do a lot of stuff on auto-pilot?
• How do new dancers feel when they’re the only dancers sitting out during the Plus tips?
• How on earth can we sell square dancing as a fun activity for new dancers?!? (Check out Nasser Shukayr’s article, Modern Western Cars for a tongue-in-cheek description of what new dancers are up against.)
• How do we eliminate items from the MS list when we still have to teach them because callers still call them? (I still go to Plus dances where Remake the Thar is called.)

The new dancers are continuing to hang in there. Needless to say, they want to learn Plus as soon as possible. And how can I discourage them and tell them to get more floortime at MS, when there’s virtually no place to dance MS in Albuquerque?

Since I resurrected this site, I’ve been paying attention to my web stats. In addition to squarez.com, I also provide space for the Albuquerque Square Dance Center and Square Dance Women. I’ve also got a page related to the Advance Workshop with Kris (AWK) and some family pictures.

Here’s a list of various search phrases that people have used to get to some place on this site:

• galdony
• squarez
• advanced awk
• awk advanced
• awk
• advanced awk programs
• women square dance callers
• square dance caller
• square dance songs
• songs about elvis
• square dancing silver falls
• thanksgiving table
• square dance font
• clubs dancing
• mexican thanksgiving
• nscpredirect
• thanksgiving plates
• firelighter contents
• silver falls square dancing
• dance women
• worst songs
• women event
• albuquerque square dance center
• square rotation
• fun with awk
• women transportation
• concept of awk
• train games
• square dance charts
• square dance photos
• thanksgiving ritual
• chick a boom
• pfeffernuts
• square dance callers new mexico
• kris jensen square

I feel sorry for the people looking for info on the AWK programming language; who’d a thunk they’d end up at a square dance site. The “Mexican Thanksgiving” is because we have photos of playing Mexican Train (a dominos game) at Thanksgiving. Ditto “train games”.

For “firelighter contents,” the Thanksgiving photos come up as the number one listing in google…a scary thought. It’s because a photo of my niece is captioned “mighty firelighter”. What this shows is how easy it is for unrelated people to find your photos/personal stuff, even though you’d think they’d be protected by the vast size of the web. “Nscpredirect” has something to do with webcounters, but I didn’t take the time to wade through the 368 sites that google lists.

From Stone Soup, a comic strip I enjoy:

Grandmother: Why do we have “Salad in a Bag”? How much did this cost? What’s wrong with just buying a head of …”

Granddaughter (opening the refrigerator): Who bought this lettuce that you have to wash?!

Square dance relevance? Left as an exercise for the reader…