Start tapping your foot and listen to the call. Heads square through, do- si-do the corner girl. Swing through, boys, run around your girl. Ferris wheel, pass through, swing and promenade. ”Go rockin` robin, you`re really gonna rock tonight.”
There are more than 6,000 moves in square dancing, but if you know your right foot from your left foot you`ve mastered the hardest part. It`s the caller`s job to keep you moving and laugh away the goofs. ”It`s hard to believe I get paid for something that is this fun,” said Ron Smejkal, caller for the Gurnee-based Walk `N` Dodgers. ”A square dance caller is really an entertainer. When I leave (a square dance) I`ve had a good time, and everyone else has, too.”
When calling, this soft-spoken man combines the swiftness of a horse race announcer, the on-the-feet thinking of an emcee, a dash of the comedian and the rhythm of the beat. His eyes dart from the music to the dancers, checking the formations, keeping ahead of the music with his next call and watching for lost souls or broken squares. One of his favorite calls is ”Oh, no!,” which loosely translated means everyone get your original partner and square up, we`ll start again, ”I goofed!”
Smejkal, 48, has been calling for seven years. He got into it when ”I just picked up a record one time and it felt good.” He taped others callers, got books and studied.
Though he makes it look so easy with one move smoothly flowing into another, Smejkal spends hours practicing to get it just right. Though it looks off the cuff, the calls have to be called in progression. ”I have to get you to a position where I can call a do-si-do. If you`re not facing anyone, you can`t do it.”
To keep it all straight, Smejkal developed his own computer program using four pairs of numbered squares, or couples, that he moves around on the computer screen using the keyboard. He programs the moves for each song by weaving the squares in and out of dance configurations as if they were couples practicing. ”I have to keep people moving and dancing. If I can make the call just before you`re done with the last move, then it flows smoothly. That`s what callers try to perfect.”
While the numbered squares are dancing around his computer screen, Smejkal is on the lookout for smooth transitions and interesting formations as well as combinations that just don`t seem to work. When he is satisfied, he makes a printout of the moves and practices them with song lyrics. By the time he is ready to call a dance, he has memorized most of the moves but puts the printout on his portable brief-case podium just like a conductor. ”I`m the only one that I know of who uses a computer,” he said.
Smejkal also relies on his computer to catalog the more than 1,000 songs he has on about 300 records he owns. A lot of planning goes into each evening, and Smejkal is preoccupied with keeping each dance he calls fresh and different from the last. ”I know every record I`ve called. I know what records I used and what figures I called for each dance. I try to use different things all the time so it`s not boring.”
A square dance lasts about 2 1/2 hours and consists of an average of seven tips. Each tip consists of two pieces, a hash and a singing call. The hash is probably most characteristic of what people conjure up when they think of square dancing. There`s a hoedown beat, the calls are made at random and people just keep moving. During a singing call, the calls are intertwined with the lyrics of the music, and if it comes out right, when the music stops you`ve danced with each person once and end up with your original partner.
”If it doesn`t work? So what, if you`ve had fun?” Smejkal said with a laugh.
When a square breaks down (usually when someone went right instead of left), it`s repaired with laughter and a quick trip to the couple`s home position to wait for the next call. There`s a lot of gentle pushing of partners who stop dead in their tracks with a lost look on their face.
To help new dancers along, Smejkal likes to arrange squares with at least two couples of ”angels,” or people who have graduated from lessons. The newcomers seem to jump around a lot while the angels glide around with a shuffle step to the beat of the music. ”If you do it that way instead of jumping you can last the whole evening.” Even so, even the most practiced of male square dancers keeps a fancy towel hanging from his belt buckle to dry overly moist hands and foreheads. ”My wife uses it just as much as I do,”
one dancer confided.
”One of the hardest things in square dancing is getting the guys to come the first time,” Smejkal said. ”Once you get them there-even if you have to lie-they`ll have a good time. I`ve never seen anyone go away without a good time.” In addition to the fun, he said, you meet the friendliest people in the world. You almost have to be outgoing, considering the nature of the dance: four couples working together to try to get through a song. ”This takes a team to make it happen.”
Camaraderie is also promoted through a code of strict square dance etiquette. At the end of each dance you bow to your partner, bow to the corner (the non-partner next to you) and thank each other. It`s also considered impolite to walk through one incomplete square that needs a couple in order to dance to get to another. Of course, even the most polite of dancers are not against playing a good practical joke on the caller. There was one dance where the guys ganged up in advance, and when Smejkal called for the girls to promenade the men did it instead.
In addition to his full-time job as a manager at the Zion nuclear plant, Smejkal, a Wildwood resident, keeps busy by calling for the Walk `N` Dodgers on the third and fifth Sundays of each month and calling on weekends for private groups and other square dance clubs in Lake and McHenry Counties and Wisconsin. He`s also president of the Federation of Lake County Area Callers. All callers must be licensed now to use music at dances to prevent copyright infringement.
Lest you think Smejkal`s wife of 28 years, Katy, is sitting home all dressed up with no one to dance with while he is calling, fellow square dancers take turns dancing with her. He said she dances more with other men than with him. Smejkal`s children have no interest in dancing at all.
Smejkal also gives square dance lessons on Thursday evenings at the Terrace Nursing Home in Waukegan. It`s hard to tell who has a better time at these lessons, the couples in their brand new western shirts and petticoats, the residents who come to watch or Smejkal parading around on the dance floor, demonstrating the moves and sweet-talking the neophytes to keep on dancing no matter how lost they feel. ”I just love to see the expressions on people`s faces when they`re dancing,” Smejkal said.
”We get quite a few residents to come and watch the square dancing,”
said Tony Wells, activity assistant at the nursing home. ”Some of them were square dancers when they were much younger. They really look forward to it.” Does anyone ever have trouble keeping up? Smejkal says no. He called at one dance where a dancer confined to a wheelchair thanked him for not slowing down, and one of his regulars is an 81-year-old man who shows up at each dance with a different woman.
”You meet real nice people at square dancing who become your instant friends. Everyone is so friendly,” said Art Bandman of Wadsworth.
”Square dancing is a well kept secret; hardly anyone knows we`re around,” said square dancer Dan Doherty of Grayslake. Too bad; they`re missing a good time.
