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Stanford Quads
Square Dance Club
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The best way to understand what we do is to experience it yourself -- but these videos illustrate some of the features of square dancing as it is done today and at Quads in particular...
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In modern square dancing, rather than learning a complete "routine", dancers move in response to a sequence of "calls" that each have meaning and can then be combined in an enormous number of ways. In our class you will learn what the calls mean, and get lots of practice doing them in both common and unusual combinations.
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In "patter" sequences, the dancers don't know what calls are coming next! Sometimes neither does the caller, because he's making it up as he goes along. That's all part of the fun!
At some clubs it is still common to wear special square dance outfits, but at Quads most of us dance in "normal clothes" most of the time. Here the variety of styles is shown as dancers from several local clubs dance together at the county fair.
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Of course we can square dance in more formal settings as well. Here the guests at the wedding of two of our members dance to a "singing call". In a singing call (as opposed to patter), the dance actions are normally pre-choreographed, and the instructions are interleaved with some of the words of a regular song.
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Many callers today use a wide variety of styles of music. Here a caller at a nearby festival uses a "rap"-style singing call to entertain the dancers.
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After completing our class, dancers will know how to dance all the calls of modern square dancing through the "Plus" level, enabling them to dance at most clubs in this area and around the world. Here dancers demonstrate their skills in responding to calls from two callers at the end of a recent class.
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After learning "Plus", many members of Quads go on to learn "Advanced" and "Challenge", which involve not only more calls but new ways of combining and transforming them. They dance these levels at other clubs and at national events (as shown here), but at Quads a complete beginner may well be dancing with an experienced Challenge dancer -- which is one reason that our class can be both faster and more thorough than any other in the area.
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Many members of Quads pride themselves in knowing the calls well enough that they can do things like dance with one or more people missing from the square. Here four Quads members dance with four "phantom dancers", while a regular square of eight real people dances to the same calls in the background.
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Another "game" that some at Quads enjoy is dancing in a hexagon (12 dancers) instead of a square. Here six members of Quads joined with six other dancers from across the country to dance in a hexagon at a national event (while the rest of the people in the room were dancing in normal squares).
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If this looks like an activity you might enjoy, come visit us in person! We have free introductory classes coming up this fall. (No obligation, no dance experience of any kind required.)
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