The Promenade in Modern Western Square Dance
In square dancing, and in particular modern Western square dance, when Promenade is called it is understood to be a "Couples Promenade" involving all four couples. The couples assume a promenade position, each turn to the right as a unit, and walk counter-clockwise around the ring. If not specified how far to walk, they walk to the gent’s home position, and then each couples turn as a unit to face into the center of the set. If close to home (¼ of the way or less), couples promenade a complete tour of the ring.
The caller can also specifically say “Promenade Home” or “Promenade All the Way” (or other variations on the wording) with the same result.
The gent might twirl the lady under his arm at the end of the move as a flourish. If the partners are ¼ of the ring or less away from his home position, then they promenade a full circle around to get back to his home.
The caller may fractionalize the call by specifically requiring the dancers to promenade only ¼, ½, or ¾ of the way around the ring.
The caller may also designate a specific couple or specific couples to promenade.
The caller may also require the dancers to continue promenading without stopping at the home position, by calling something like “Promenade – Don’t stop or slow-down”. This will be a lead-in to a new call, whereas a “Promenade Home” is considered the end of a square dance sequence in most cases.
Read more about this topic: Promenade (dance Move)
Famous quotes containing the words square dance, promenade, modern, western, square and/or dance:
“The square dance fiddler’s first concern is to carry a tune, but he must carry it loud enough to be heard over the noise of stamping feet, the cries of the “caller,” and the shouts of the dancers. When he fiddles, he “fiddles all over”; feet, hands, knees, head, and eyes are all busy.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The deft white-stockinged dance in thick-soled
shoes! Denmark’s sanctuaried Jews!”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)