MWSD 5 - We're Gonna Have a Ball

This is the final dance from Jim Mayo's Modern Western Square Dance workshop, recorded November 19, 2011, as part of the Dare To Be Square Weekend held at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC. The weekend was supported in part—including the videography expense—by Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS). For many of the 70 dancers at the weekend, this event was their first exposure to MWSD. For his workshop, Jim started figures that the dancers with backgrounds in traditional squares would know. He then introduced Star Thru and Square Thru and demonstrated how those gave callers more options to move dancers around. He then spoke about Swing Thru and its effect on the dancing, and how it led rapidly to the introduction of two other calls—Run and Trade. Throughout the workshop, he did some instruction, then followed with a patter call and then a singing call that often involved some of the same sequence of moves that dancers had just done. Jim used a recording from his collection for the music for this series of calls. The documentation for the weekend includes these videotapes—nearly 100 by the time the whole series is uploaded—plus audio recordings and a syllabus. Further information about the project can be found here: http://www.SquareDanceHistory.org