Teaching Trade the Wave

by Orlo Hoadley - 3/11/95

Trade the Wave is undoubtedly the most difficult call for dancers in the Plus vocabulary. This is so because each dancer goes off in a different direction, and has no other dancer who acts as a guide or a reference point. The usual practice of "taking a peek" helps a lot when you're walking them through the movement, but if you want them to move smoothly through it in a figure, the only way you can give them a good look at the spot they're aiming for is to precede the call with a Wave Balance: call "Balance and Peek". Then, if your dancers like to play the Simon-Says game, you can once in a while call "Balance and Peek + Swing Thru" or some such. Just remember that dancers are likely to (justifiably, in my opinion) resent being tricked unless they are warned in advance that you are going to play games with them.

You can help your dancers learn Trade the Wave if you point out to them that the same two dancers who are neighbors in the starting wave will end up as neighbors again, but holding the opposite hands. That is, the same two persons who are neighbors holding right hands at the beginning will again be neighbors at the finish, on the other end of the wave and holding left hands, and vice versa..

Has anybody noticed that Trade the Wave could also be called as All Eight Cross-Run? And here are a couple more equivalents that work for any arrangement in R-H or L-H waves:

1. Centers Trade + Neighbors Trade + Centers Trade + All U-Turn Back;

2. Centers Hinge a Quarter + Diamond Circulate + Centers Hinge a Quarter.