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?

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…

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.

Here’s another article on square dancing’s health benefits: WebMD – Don’t Be a Square — Dance!.

Sample quote:

With all its moving, twisting, and turning, square dancing provides more than the daily dose of heart- and bone-healthy physical activity. Remembering all the calls — from “do-si-do” to ‘alemand’ — keeps the mind sharp, potentially staving off age-related memory loss, experts say. And the companionship that regular square dancing offers is an antidote to depression and loneliness, a statement confirmed by square-dancing advocates everywhere.

Too bad it also mentions the average age of square dancers…75 years in one club. Of course, it’s a good testimony about square dancing’s health benefits…but it also makes it unappealing to younger dancers (and even aging boomers who are trying to maintain a youthful image).

The latest (October 2002) issue of the Nutrition Action Healthletter, published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest has an article by David Schardt, “Brain Boosters and Busters”. This issue isn’t on line yet, so I can’t link to it.

There are a couple of relevant (to square dancing) quotes in the article:

• “Keeping aerobically fit can have a significant effect on our cognitive function as we age, and it’s pretty easy to do.”

• “To maintain cognitive function at a high level, you need continuing mental stimulation,” says K. Warner Schaie of the Seattle Longitudinal Study.

  “We find that people who do jigsaw puzzles are better at spatial orientation than people who don’t do them,” he adds. Ditto for square-dancers, probably because they have to orient themselves in space and follow a sequence of steps.

I googled “square dance college” to see if there were many colleges that provided some kind of square dance activity. (I remembered my first exposure to square dancing was during orientation week at my college (Pomona College).) In the first 40 results, I found these:

• At Swarthmore, there was a history of square dances during orientation (sounds familiar, eh?)
• At Hiram College, they had a square dance out on a field during their Institute Week. Here are some pictures of casually-dressed college kids having fun.
• At UC San Diego’s Warren College, a square dance reunion was scheduled for September 21, 2002, but I couldn’t find any other details.
• Wheaton College had a square dance scheduled for August 31, 2002.
• The University of Guelph in Canada has College Royal open house days, with square dancing competition (teams of 8 ) and a square dance director and assistant director.
• St. Louis University offers a square dance during its Welcome Week.

So I guess some colleges still do some square dancing as part of their orientations.

I’m intrigued by the square dance competition at Guelph, so I googled it and found:

• Grab Your Partner and Head for College Royal.
• Additional Information About Events/Competitions
  

  More than 100 University of Guelph students and alumni partake in this annual event. The student competition on Saturday showcases students in fierce, but fun competition and the alumni competition on Sunday allows them to carry on the feud. Square dancing is a College Royal tradition, so be sure to check it out!

Looks like the archive of the sd-callers mailing list has run out of room; messages stopped being archived in November 2001. Ever so appropriately, the final message involves that venerable and still-controversial question of who’s your partner in a wave.

Speaking of venerable and controversial questions, Dan Nordbye, at a dance at Duke City Singles, called a crossfire from an unusual formation…something like this:

He wanted the center six (the column) to trade while those two dancers stuck out on the ends crossfold and then everybody step ahead to a column. If he hadn’t told us who the centers were, I don’t think I would have solved the puzzle in dance-time.

Crossfire is one of those calls that seems to ignite (so to speak) controversy. In particular, the question of crossfire from outfacing lines, which brings up the question of whether crossfire is a four- or eight- person call often leads to vehement discussion. For some background, see Vic Ceder’s definition and his supporting essay. Also see the Square Dance Guru’s take on crossfire. CALLERLAB’s Plus definitions define crossfire as:

As the centers begin to Trade, the ends Cross Fold. Upon completing their Trade, the centers release hands and step straight forward forming an ocean wave or mini-wave with the dancers they are facing. If the Trade leaves the original centers facing no one, they step forward and remain facing out.

This begs the question because if crossfire is a four-person call, the centers who did the trade from outfacing lines aren’t really “facing” anyone, since there’s the dividing wall between the two groups of four dancers.

However, leaving aside the crossfire controversy, Dan called a really fun dance. He’s a true professional, mixing some interesting choreography with smooth dancing, while keeping the dancers laughing. Each tip was different; each tip had a purpose. He workshopped circulates and split circulates from infacing and outfacing lines (although he never did the dread “split circulate 1-1/2, twice” thing). I heard a little grumbling (“why couldn’t he just call pass thru and partner trade..”), but most of the dancers had fun.

Here’s an article (The Seattle Press – Dancing Your Passion: On Love and Obsession) on zydeco dancing in particular, but on dance obsession in general. Here are some quotes:

• …ask enough dancers about why they dance and a common theme emerges, that of an experience of transcendent joy.
• We enthusiasts will go to great lengths, often incomprehensible to outsiders, to immerse ourselves in the dance.
• “I’m ashamed to say this,” says [name your favorite dance addict], an avid dancer, “but I schedule visits with my own parents around [favorite dance form] dances.”
• Yet as time goes on, nearly every dancer will relate tales of injuries arising from the repetitive stress of set patterns of movement, and hobbling around on one’s sore knees after a night of hard dancing becomes habitual and accepted.
• Desires to linger at dinner parties, or to spend quiet evenings at home, go unrequited. Friends drift away, and activities in which one used to delight get shelved in favor of dance.
• Put simply, our passion is in pursuit of “perfect dances” where one attains euphoria–a feeling of being in love.