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43: THE STRUCTURE OF A TIPNote: Much of the vocabulary introduced in this section is useful for talking about square dancing, but it isn't anything that the caller normally needs to say to the dancers directly. So they aren't part of the "square dance language" in that you necessarily need to recognize these words to dance. But they can be helpful to know, when you are talking either with the caller or to other dancers about what's going on.Square dancing begins with eight dancers forming a square. There are usually more than eight dancers -- they all form squares in groups of eight at the same time. After some dancing, at the direction of the caller, they stop and take a break. Each such interval of dancing is called a tip. Customs vary about the length of a tip, but it's commonly in the range of 9 to 12 minutes. In an evening of square dancing, there might be 7 to 10 such tips. Each tip traditionally begins with the caller asking the dancers to Bow to Your Partner and then Bow to Your Corner. Tips are commonly divided into two parts, a "patter" portion and a "singer" portion. This isn't always the case -- some groups only do "patter", and at some events there may be tips that are made up of more than one "singer". We will start by looking at the structure of "patter". The caller will be giving the dancers calls, each consisting of one of the call names ("verbs") such as we have been exploring in this tutorial along with words that indicate who should do them ("nouns") or that modify how they should do them (like "adverbs"). Each such combination can be considered to be like a sentence in English, representing a complete thought. Just as sentences can be combined to form paragraphs, the calls of square dancing are combined to form sequences. Generally, each sequence will take the dancers through a variety of actions, putting them into various formations along the way, in such a way that at the end they will be back at their home spot. The last call of a sequence can be any action that leaves them at or near that spot. But very frequently it will be Promenade -- with the ending at home just implied. In other words, in "patter", after each sequence each dancer will be back at his or her original spot, with his or her original partner. Other than that, these sequences have no particular structure or length. They might be as short as three calls, or they might go on for a minute or longer. Many callers make them up as they go along. Nor does a tip consist of any particular number of sequences. The caller simply calls sequences until reaching the customary amount of time for a tip, and then stops. At the end of the tip, the caller will typically again ask everyone to bow to their partner and their corner, and the dancers will all somehow thank each other for the dancing. Customs about that vary from place to place, but it usually involves some combination of handshakes or other gestures, and actually saying the words "thank you".
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