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5: A FEW MORE VERBS
Now let's look at some actions that can be done by two dancers who are directly facing.Perhaps one of the best-known square dance terms -- and one of the few that isn't made up of ordinary English words -- is Dosado. The meaning of this is that the two dancers revolve around each other, without turning, first passing right shoulders, then moving sideways back to back to their right, and then walking backwards until they have returned to their original spot. The key points to note here are not turning and starting by passing right shoulders, because these are common features of many actions in square dancing.
If two dancers do only half of that action and don't return to their original spots, but instead stay on the other side, back to back, this is called a Pass Thru.
Many actions in square dancing involve touching or holding hands. A Pull By is very much like a Pass Thru but the two dancers first extend their right hands to each other, as if they were going to shake hands. As they go past each other, they drop hands. They must drop hands soon enough that they don't pull each other "off course", because they are supposed to end up standing back to back.
If two dancers do only 1/2 of a Pass Thru or Pull By, so that they stop standing side by side, and take hands with each other, this is called Step to a Wave. Why do they hold hands? Because two dancers who are standing side by side always hold hands with each other.
But, as you may recall, the term "wave" normally refers to four dancers lined up with each other. In the illustration above, there are only two dancers. So why is this called "Step to a Wave"? The answer is that normally two pairs of dancers are doing this at the same time, so the four of them form a wave.
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