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There have been great changes since 1951, not all reassuring. The
fantastic prestige of "name callers"; a willingness to dance to calling that disregards
the 8-count phrase; monotonous repetition of grill-type figures; the vast size of the whole
activity - these could be dangerous. Most alarming is the tendency to conformity. We have become as
uniform as soup cans on a super-market shelf. Do not be disturbed. Last week we saw a
"do-ci-do"! Contras are coming back. Every day another maverick sneaks out of the corral,
sniffs the air, senses a good rain, and settles down to graze on the old pasture. The dance goes
on, down the worn path taken by the first ancestor. We shall never lock it up in any man's stable.
It has wings, and it is ever so much bigger than we are.
Square Dancing had been around for centuries. It began in England and
France and came to America early in the history of the new world. As the population spread westward
so also did square dancing taking different forms as it went. The uniquely American contribution to
this development was the caller, sometimes called the prompter because he prompted the dancers
memory of patterns they had learned. Modern square dancing began with the advent of public address
equipment good enough to allow changing dance patterns and the use of recorded music. In the next
20 years hundreds of new calls were created. By the mid-1970s the organization CALLERLAB was able
to bring order to the new-call confusion by establishing standard dancing programs - Basic,
Mainstream, Plus, etc... CALLERLAB also provided standard call definitions, timing and styling.
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