Advanced Level: The next program of square dancing after Plus which consists of a total of 81 calls. This is in addition to the Mainstream and Plus level calls.   Usually Advanced is divided into A1 and A2.

Air Raid: A signal for dancers to reform after the square has completely broken down.  By convention, dancers should form facing line and rejoin dancing when appropriate.

Angel:  An experienced dancer who attends classes to fill out squares and help the caller demonstrate the proper way to perform various movements. The Guardian Angel is the class mentor, counselor, and liaison with the club leadership.

APD: All Position Dancing. Dancing either the girl’s or boy’s position from all standard formations of square dancing calls.

Challenge Level: The most advanced program of Modern Western Square Dancing which can include hundreds of calls and a variety of formations.

Dangle: A small plastic or metal object which attaches to a badge, using only a single metal ring. This object can symbolize a variety of things, including such items as special events, dancing in unique locations or situations (on a boat, in sand, etc.)

DBD: Dancing By Definition. Where individual calls can be broken into their component parts, so that a call can be danced from any position on the floor, including dancing a call from a different starting position.

Home Position: Your position within the square at the beginning of the tip.

Mainstream Level: The beginning level of square dancing which consists of 68 calls.

Patter Call: Also called Hash.  A single tune, used by a caller as background for a series of calls, with no lyrics accompanying the music. Couples will be moved in a variety of formations, but brought back to their home position before the next set of calls. This may occur several times during the patter call.

Plus Level: The next program of square dancing after Mainstream which consists of 32 additional calls in addition to Mainstream calls.

Singing Call: A single call where the caller will mix square dance directions with singing. Ladies will rotate between each man in the square during the song, usually in a counter-clockwise direction.

Specialty Tips: Certain tips celebrate or commemorate specific groups or people.  There are Memorial Tips to honor the dead.  Redwood Tips are for tall people; Munchkin Tips are for shorter folks.  Bear Tips are for the husky, hairy types and those who love them.  Leather Tips are for showing off skin and black leather.  Moonshine Tips are for showing off skin—naked dancing late at night in a closed room.

Square Your Sets: The caller is requesting you return to your home positions.

Stir the Bucket: Where each couple in a square moves to the next counter-clockwise position.

Tip: A square dance session consisting of two parts, a patter call and a singing call. The patter call consists of a rapid-fire sequence of spoken calls which lead the dancers through intricate and unpredictable patterns. There is usually background music to provide a basic beat, but the emphasis is on dance as an intellectual exercise. In the singing call, the moves are much more predictable and usually consist of sequences practiced during the patter call. The caller usually sings a popular song with the calls interspersed between the phrases and the emphasis is on dancing to the music. The term comes from the practice of tipping the cuer so he would keep calling for a longer time.

TNP: Take No Prisoners.  A special tip with no pauses between each of the formations, and is generally considered a challenge. The tempo of the music is also increased, adding to the difficulty. This is usually done to basic/mainstream calls (i.e. no Plus).

Thanks to http://www.highmountainsquares.org/Glossary.htm for providing the basis of this list.

Dosado is one call that is common to most American folk dances, reflecting the common French source.  Is it any surprise that such a ubiquitous call should provoke flock of variations?  This article is a bit long, but engaging.

Dosado

In Northern England, perhaps the Lakes Region, during the Elizabethan period, commoners would dance in a manner somewhat different from Londoners and others in the south.  One of the routines of the dance became Box the Gnat.  Likely, during Cromwell and the Puritans’ domination the dance lost its musical accompaniment and took on a more religious meaning (as did nearly all aspects of life during this oppressive period).  The dance was accompanied by clapping and tapping.  Dance steps were smooth and sliding.  Sometime along the way, emigrants from the north of England settled in the mountains of Kentucky, where they continued their dance from the old country.  The existence of the dance was only discovered in 1916, and is called the Kentucky running set.  There is a video of the Kentucky running set in the right column (with music).  Box the Gnat has a long, interesting story, and there is nothing about flying insects or corrupted French.

Box the Gnat

Modern Western Square Dancing is a relatively recent development, a codification of various calls associated with country dance in the 1940′s.  The roots of square dance go much deeper into the past.  The French Quadrille was one of the early forms of couples dance.  Before this time, most dancing was done in lines.  Here is a video of  a quadrille being performed.  Many of the movements are familiar, but the fancy footwork has been lost.

Quadrille

Square dancing has its own set of jargon, like other hobbies and vocations.  Many of the terms used in calls are pretty clear and self-explanatory:  Run, Circulate, Courtesy Turn, and so forth.  Why some calls have the names they do is much harder to explain.  Why is it a California Twirl, and not a Tennessee Twirl, for example?  More research is needed.

Alamo is that place in Texas where the Mexicans beat up on the Texians.  The Spanish named their mission Alamo for the cottonwood trees in the El Paso area.  Interestingly, Do-paso also derives its name from El Paso.  The folks down there didn’t like doing a plain old Do-si-do, so they developed their own version.

Thar is the name of a desert in northwest India and Pakistan.  Thar is also the alternative spelling of a Himalayan goat, tahr.  Thar is often used in dialects meaning there:  Over thar.  In square dance usage, it was possibly started as a masculine form of star since it is a gender-specific call—women star and men thar.

Allemande is a French term for Germany (Left Germany?).  An allemande is also a movement in a dance suite.  Square dance usage likely comes from the latter, but it could also be a corruption of some other phrase.

Sashay is another term from the French, the verb chasser. A chassé is a sliding dance step, and sashay is the Anglicized spelling.  To sashay, of course, is to walk showily or to strut.  Callerlab decreed that there is no Sashay call, but only the position of female on the left in a couple.

Promenade is another French word for walk.  To promenade is to walk leisurely in a public place, to see and be seen.  A promenade is also a place to promenade and sashay.

Box the Gnat probably has a colorful history as a name, but the call describes the hand actions:  the lead dancer makes a box with his hand to capture the gnat that is his partner’s hand.  Maybe someone was drinking too much moonshine.

A Flutterwheel is a waterwheel that is gets its water from a chute or flume (as opposed to using river currents).  Flutterwheel is also the name of a quilting pattern.  Since square dancing using both forward and reverse flutterwheels, and has country origins, it is safe to guess that the square dancing term is related to the quilting term.  Take a look at the pictures on Google.

Acey-deucy is a variation of the game of Backgammon.  A Navy chief petty officer once told me that there are two kinds of ships in the Navy:  Acey-deucy ships and Cribbage ships.  Both games help pass the time at sea.  How the board game became “ends circulate and centers trade” in square dancing is mystifying.

–Daryl Daniels, Linguist

In the movies we see the ladies with big hair and lavish gowns in quadrilles with men in frilly shirts and ornate waistcoats.  Except for a word or two between dance partners (leading characters, naturally), the set is silent and precise.  Square dancing, too, and be silent and elaborate, but that’s for the Challenge program and the occasional performance troupe.

Western Star Dancers unofficial motto is We’re here to have fun.  Gay square dancing has developed a list of responses dancers can make while completing a call.  A couple years ago, Joe/Todd noticed that Ping Pong Circulate sounds like King Kong Circulate.  Soon, they had most of the club huffing like a gorilla into the next spot in the formation.  Giggles and chortles ensued.

This list has evolved over the years.  Some of the sound effects go out of style, and others blossom into being.  There is a practical purpose to this silliness.  These bits of styling serve both as a cue for the dancers, and as a means for all the squares on the dance floor to synchronize their steps.

As with all styling, this is not required.  Only do what you are comfortable with; smooth dancing should be your aim.

Square Dance Sound Effects

We learn from our mistakes, so as a dancer is learning a new program, breaking down a square is a learning opportunity.  Quite often a person learns a call by muffing it and breaking down a square.  It is part of the learning process.

However, when you take the floor at a dance, hoedown, roundup, or convention, you are expected to know (in every sense of the word) all of the calls of the announced program.

Nonetheless, people lose concentration, don’t hear (or mis-hear) a call, or something, and the square still breaks down.

Allan Hurst, a caller with several years experience, wrote an article addressing the issue.  If your square broke down and turned your brown eyes blue, recovery and continuing your tip will make your blue eyes brown again.

Don’t Cry Over Broken Squares Fix Them 2009

Most square dancers are patient and considerate enough to tolerate the occasional brain freeze or misstep or loss of concentration, and help another dancer recover to save the square from breaking down.  Problems arise, however, with dancers who just can’t remember the difference between Spinning the Top and Fanning the Top, for example.

In an article that first appeared in WSD Quarterly Selections, Winter 1990, Jana Hollingsworth discusses the responsibility of square dancers to the others in the square, and suggests ways to improve.

Somebody Pull Me Through

SUICIDE SQUARES:

Sometimes, especially when you’re learning a program, there’ll be a dance or a tip that you know you don’t know all the calls for.  It’s really grisly to end up in a square of people who are uptight because you keep messing up; so if you want to dance,  the thing to do is to get together with other people who are in the same boat and form a SUICIDE SQUARE.   The object is to just keep dancing – you all know you’re going to bneak down anyhow, so you just see how fast you can recover and keep on dancing!

CHECK OUT YOUR SQUARE:

The thing that NOBODY ever admits to you is that they can’t remember who their corner is! Yet that’s often the case, and not only with new dancers, either!  You have to come up with a system to help you remember who’s where in your square. For now, don’t bother remembering everyone – just start by really concentrating on who your partner and corner are, and where home is.  Every time you qet home, check it out.

IT’S HANDY TO KNOW

that at Basic, virtually every time an Allemande Left is called,  you’re supposed to do it with the person who was your corner the last time you were squared up. At least once every dance, a square breaks down because someone allemande left-ed with the wrong person! If you’re just slightly out of position, you may be able to save your square by LOOKING AROUND.   If your corner is somewhere nearby, try to maneuver to allemande with that person, and everyone else may fall into place.

WHAT ABOUT RECOVERING  ONCE WE’RE BROKEN DOWN?

Eventually, you’ll know from experience where you’d be at the end of a call if you hadn’t broken down in the middle of it. For example, Promenade usually sends you home. So if you’re wandering around in a broken-down state,  keep listening! When the caller says to Promenade (or Right and Left Grand or Weave the Ring), evenyone can just get home quick and be ready to go with the next call!

--from WSD Today, November 6, 1989

The Highland Fling is used in gay square dancing as a replacement for Do-sa-do and as an activity for the inactive couple in Couples Promenade.  There is likely a long, colorful saga of the history of The Highland Fling involving clans and jigs and things Scottish.  Wikipedia will have those details.  Gay people like to do the fling because it is much more tactile (hence, sensual) than the alternative.

Dancers start hip to hip.  The left hands can touch over head, but they don’t have to.  Right arms go around your partner’s waist.  Turn completely around, then step back.  You will be right back where you started.  All this pretty work (skirt work is appropriate here if you have a skirt) accomplishes nothing.  Well, there is the thrill of touching and holding your partner, but if you get all tingly doing the Highland Fling, you may wish to discuss this with your therapist.  The Highland Fling starts and ends in exactly the same place.  You start facing your partner and end facing your partner.