Why Two Couple Dancing - a Brief Discussion

Simply stated Two Couple Dancing is,

• Fun,
• Educational
• Convenient

…………and, it adds variety

We all love challenge dancing - it’s fun! Challenge dancing provides us with exercise, stretches our minds, and allows us to meet and enjoy other people. These aspects are also present in Two Couple Dancing, and this new experience is also enjoyable from a novelty aspect. It’s different; it’s not what we’re used to. It adds variety to our total dancing experience

Two Couple Dancing is also a way to improve your skills. In CD Workshop’s 2 couple material, you’ll find many calls used from various non-standard positions. Men will be dancing in the women’s "normal" position, and vice versa. Calls will start from left-handed and T-bone setups. There’s some dancing with phantom spots, but not too much. All this variety allows you to significantly improve your dancing ability.

Two Couple Dancing is convenient. We’ve all experienced occasional difficulty assembling a full square for a workshop. Maybe you’re in an area with just a few challenge dancers at your level. Often regular workshops are canceled because of sickness, or perhaps because one or more members are out of town. We believe it’s more than three times easier to recruit two other people than to find six others for a full square. In these situations Two Couple Dancing becomes an excellent alternative. Often it can be the difference between dancing and not dancing.

Many dancers find themselves workshopping alone, either one person or one couple. You’ll find it considerably easier to accomplish this with 2 couple material than with material called for an 8 person square.

Here’s another application. Let’s say you’re dancing C1, but you have a couple of friends who are taking C1 lessons. Two Couple Dancing provides an excellent opportunity for you to help them accelerate their learning curve without the necessity of recruiting a full square. They can be attending C1 dances with you in much less time.

Of course Two Couple Dancing isn’t restricted to only two couples. It just means that a "square" is comprised of only two couples, not the traditional four. There’s no reason that you couldn’t have multiple two couple "squares" dancing at one time.

Tips on Dancing the Two Couple CD

When you begin dancing this CD, you should set up the two couples facing each other. Assume that you’re the head couples. Either couple can be couple #1, and the other should then be couple #3. We do recommend you note this couple-number designation before you start dancing because there will be instances when instructions are called specifically to couple #1 or couple #3. In order to include practice on 8 person calls such as Load the Boat, it was necessary to introduce phantoms into Two Couple Dancing. Don’t panic! Their frequency is moderate, and the caller will state when these phantoms are required and where they are at the start of a given call. For example, the caller might say, "You’re ends of lines, Load the Boat".