Square Line Special

Square Line Special is a New England Contra Dance. It was devised by Gary Roodman (website) in 1987 and published in Calculated Figures. It is a 4 Couple Longways dance with the 1s, 3s improper. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 2413. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

The tune is a traditional one called Swinging on a Gate. It was performed by Anna Patton, Naomi Morse, and Peter Barnes on the album Band of Friends.

The animation plays at 111 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily (no music plays during this slow set). Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

The dance contains the following figures: circle, cast, lead, rights and lefts, ladies chain (courtesy turn), right and left through, long lines forward and back, swing (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=SquareLineSpecial

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The dance is copyright © 1987 by Gary Roodman. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.