square dance concept
A square dance concept is an addition to a square dance call which modifies it in some way. Square dance calls and concepts are the prime building blocks of modern Western square dance.
Concepts are an important aspect of challenge square dance, an advanced form of modern Western square dance that focuses on problem solving.
Some of the concepts have fairly straight-forward definitions, as in "As Couples" do this or in "Tandem" do that. However, more complex concepts' names don't necessarily say much about their definitions: for example, the concepts "Checkpoint" and "Emulate". The Mainstream and Plus program lists do not include any concepts, but at the higher levels of dancing the number of concepts and their relative importance increases.
To explain how a concept works, let's take the call "Pass Thru" and apply the concept "Tandem" to it. The caller would say "Tandem Pass Thru":
- "Pass Thru" means two people, who are standing opposite to each other, step forward, pass each other (passing right shoulders where they would otherwise collide), and stop with backs to each other and standing in their original opposite's footprints.
- The "Tandem" concept pairs two people, who are standing one behind the other (i.e. in tandem to each other), and lets the pair act as if they were one person during the execution of a specific call.
- Therefore, in a "Tandem Pass Thru" two tandem pairs of people (i.e., four people) execute the "Pass Thru" call as if they were two individuals, resulting in different starting and ending formations than a normal "Pass Thru". In particular, each dancer passes two people in a "Tandem Pass Thru"; each dancer in the normal "Pass Thru" passes just one dancer.
Concepts often generalize more basic notions of square dancing, but they also can make learning more difficult. The Mainstream program call "Double Pass Thru" is identical to the "Tandem Pass Thru" described above, but the "Tandem" concept is not taught until the C1 program.
See also
External links
- Callerlab- International Association of Square Dance Callers
- American Callers Association
- Dosado.com- An information portal for modern Western square dance
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