Tech Squares: the square and round dance club of MIT

Call of the Month: September, 1991

Replacing parts of a call

by Barry Leiba

Two months ago we looked at COORDINATE, which is a call with three parts to it. There are other calls like that—they can be clearly defined as "do 'a', then do 'b', then do 'c'". For example:
  • SWING THRU—turn ½ by the right, turn ½ by the left.
  • LINEAR CYCLE—hinge, those facing out fold and all double pass thru, peel off.
  • SPIN CHAIN THRU—trade, centers cast ¾, very center two trade, centers cast ¾.
  • REMAKE THE WAVE—hinge, centers trade, cast ¾.

It's common practice at the Challenge level for callers to ask dancers to replace parts of calls with other calls, to eliminate parts completely, or to interrupt a call and finish it later. There's no need to go into a lot of that at the Plus level, but thinking about some simple replacements helps to reinforce the definitions of the calls, and contributes to some interesting choreography. This month we'll look at some simple replacements.

First, a call generally must have at least three well-defined parts in order to be eligible for replacement. One wouldn't normally try to replace a part of SWING THRU. Second, the first part of a call is not generally replaced, since there must be time for the caller to tell the dancers what to replace. Third, the formation after the replacement must be one that allows the call to be finished. You may have already seen an example of this in the recent quarterly LINEAR TAG. LINEAR TAG can be described as "LINEAR CYCLE, but replace the PEEL OFF with nothing".

Start from our squared-up set and have the heads LEAD RIGHT and step to a wave. Now:
REMAKE THE WAVE, but replace the CENTERS TRADE with an ALL EIGHT CIRCULATE. If we look at the definition above and make the replacement, we can see that everyone HINGEs, then we ALL EIGHT CIRCULATE, then we CAST ¾.
That's a pretty simple example and it has very good dance flow.

Now from the same waves (boys in the middle) let's try this one:

Caller says:                         Dancers do: 
SPIN CHAIN THRU                      TRADE
Boys turn back.                      boys turn back, girls CAST ¾. 
Replace the last CAST ¾              center girls TRADE
 with a TRADE                        girls TRADE

and we end in diamonds. This one has a little more to it, but it's still pretty clear. It adds a new way to get into diamonds.

These have been easy, since the calls are clearly divided into parts. LINEAR CYCLE is also divided into parts, but it's usually danced more by feel than by definition. Replacing parts of LINEAR CYCLE will usually be harder than replacing parts of REMAKE THE WAVE. Let's flip the above diamonds and TRADE THE WAVE, putting the girls in the middle of regular waves. Then we can try: LINEAR CYCLE, but replace the PEEL OFF with a TRACK 2. That flows quite nicely... HINGE, girls FOLD and all DOUBLE PASS THRU, TRACK 2. Remember that LINEAR CYCLE is not a RECYCLE AND SWEEP ¼, which is often how it's danced. As an exercise, see what happens if you try "LINEAR CYCLE, but replace the PEEL OFF with a PARTNER TRADE". That flows well too, but I don't think I'd want to see that called even at a Challenge dance.

(Printable Version)

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