Class Resources
Welcome to our Mainstream Square Dance Class!
There is a number of simple steps you can take to accelerate your learning. The best practice for speeding up your learning is to read through the list of calls taught the previous week and review their definitions in-between our Wednesday classes. This is most easily done by going to our website’s Class Information menu and clicking on the Mainstream Calls by Lesson. This will display a listing of calls scheduled to be taught each lesson. Click on the Lesson number hyperlink and the calls from that lesson and their definitions will be displayed.
There are a number of websites that are very useful to those learning how to square dance. The links below highlight the ones most helpful.
Below is more overview of each of these resources. Browse through these when you get a moment an feel free to click on the links to see what these sites have to offer.
Great Plain Squares Resources
Mainstream Calls by Lesson – This link is found on our website: greatplainsquares.org under the Class Information menu. The web page provide the lesson plan that outlines the calls planed for each of our 17 lessons. The Lesson headings are links will navigate you to each lesson’s call-detail page. The call detail pages details on each call in a lesson. This Call Details for each lesson includes:
The name of the call
The call definition
The call detail page also includes links to other sites that will provide a visual demonstration of the call.
North Shore Squares (NSS) video link. On these video links, the NSS demonstrate the call while the dancer actions are described.
Taminations link. Taminations provides a graphical demonstration of the dancer’s movements to perform the call. Please see below the overview of Taminations for a full outline of information provided by this valuable resource.
North Shore Squares
The North Shore Squares is an active square dance club in the Chicago suburbs that has put together a fine array of instructional videos that will walk you through each and every individual call. The Lesson Call Details pages have links to this amazing resource.
Thank you, North Shore Squares!
Taminations
Taminations is animated software that provides animations for square dance calls. You can access Taminations from any browser or you can download the Taminations app to your PC, tablet or phone.
Taminations provides multiple benefits for those wanting to better learn and understand square dance calls. The links from the Call Details pages will take you directly to a specific call in Taminations and allow you to play the animation of the dancer’s movements. There are other features of Taminiations that is beneficial.
Call Definitions - Taminations provides a detailed description of the call’s definition of the dancer’s movement.
Multiple Formations - Once you learn a call, test your knowledge of the call. Look at all the the “green” colored options under a specific call and see if you can guess what the dancer’s movement will be based on the definition.
Check it out! A square dance club in Ottawa gives a very through review of how to use Taminations.
Saddlebrook Squares
Saddlebrook Squares is a square dance club in Tucson, Arizona that has put together a great array of videos of Mainstream square dance calls. Click here to see the index of their videos