Introduction

Hello fellow dancers! I'm Rachel, creator of Phantom Columnist, a blog in which I hope to write a subset of my multitudes of squares-related thoughts. I expect these will range from musings on square dance etiquette to explorations of calls and concepts, from tales of last night's trickiest calls to ideas about teaching, from original sequences to the worst puns you've ever heard, and whatever else comes up. Part of the reason I'm starting this blog is to put all of my thoughts and ideas in one place in order to have a more consistent record than my current collection of social media posts here, emails there, and notes-to-self hiding somewhere on my hard drive. I'm also hoping to reach a wider audience than just the people with whom I'm comfortable starting random conversations about squares.

Here's some info about my background in square dancing: I learned plus as a college freshman at MIT's Tech Squares from September to December 2008 and it has been one of my best decisions of recent memory. I think my initial motivation for trying the class had to do with fond memories of father-daughter square dances held for young Girl Scouts in my hometown (which all assumed no prior experience). After taking time to get comfortable with plus, I eagerly learned A1, A2, and C1 between September 2010 and June 2011 and C2 between September 2011 and June 2012. I've self-studied C3A but (as of this post) have had few opportunities to dance it. A bunch of my dancing friends have been taking a C4 class and love to talk about it, so I've also had the privilege of hearing about many calls and concepts that I can enjoy without needing to remember after the conversation. I'm "ambidancetrous" (fantastic term used for being able to dance either gender) and enjoy snap switching and dancing with phantoms. Sometimes I enjoy other hacks like hexagon dancing, nose dancing, or gemini/tandem dancing. I'm currently between clubs as I've just left MIT but haven't yet settled in my next city, San Francisco, but I'm looking forward to dancing various places out in the Bay Area.

Until next time, a quick joke:
Q: What challenge call is like speed dating?
A: Single rotate