At the Fall Challenge weekend, I called a tip with a new concept called "cardinal directions". Partway through writing it, I realized it's a generalization of the standard "near/far" modifier for setting up asymmetric squares, as in "near box do one thing, far box do another thing". The idea is to define north as the direction of the caller (ie behind couple #1), south as the wall behind couple #3, and east and west as the walls behind couples #4 and #2 respectively. (This is not how I defined it at the weekend, but I got feedback that dancers expected north/south to align with head walls.)
So instead of saying "near box do one thing, far box do another thing", the caller could say "northern box do one thing, southern box do another thing". It also introduces east/west as a perpendicular axis to do the same thing, eg "eastern line do one thing, western line do another thing". Further, it provides a new way to specify directions beyond in/out. Some examples:
- Quarter west (as opposed to quarter in/out)
- From lines facing out and facing east/west, in each couple, the northerners run
- From lines facing out and facing north/south, east roll circulate
- From waves running east-west, southerners ripple the wave
Pretty much all of the calls like this result in asymmetry right away.
The feedback I got was positive. If this sounds interesting and worth pursuing as a concept, I could write up a paper with examples, and talk to Bill about getting it into sd. Thoughts?
Dave