Square Dance Tutorial

Counter Rotate

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2.1: USEFUL IMPLICATIONS

Because dancers are moving in a circular path and turning the same amount that they move, they maintain the same orientation (angle) in relation to the center point.

Dancers will generally wind up in the same kind of position as the one from which they started (e.g., if they start as a trailer they will still be a trailer, if they start as a beau they will still be a beau).

Do not be alarmed by terms like "distance" and "angle". You do not need a tape measure or protractor to dance any of these calls!

The principles we will be discussing in this section can help you understand why Counter Rotate works the way it does from a particular formation. But while actually dancing the sorts of calls used at Advanced, you probably won't need to be thinking of these things at all. Even in the more challenging cases, most of the time you would only need to be concerned with very rough measures of distance like "near" or "far", and very approximate angles like "ahead and to the left".

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