There are many situations in square dancing where it is common practice to remove a distortion in a formation before doing a concept/call and put back the distortion after the call is completed. This is commonly known as "taking it out" and "putting it back".

When dancers or callers say "take it out" before doing a distorted formation call, they really mean a variety of things. Taking out a distorted formation call does not mean the same thing for all situations. It varies from distorted formation to distorted formation. Sometimes "taking it out" does not require "putting it back". "Putting it back" does not need to be preceded by a previous "take out". "Putting it back" sometimes means restoring a distortion after the call is done. Sometimes it means restoring a concept's basic orientation after the call is done, for example, restoring the Once Removedness of a formation after the call is finished. Note that this is often done when there was no "take out" involved when doing some calls.

Taking a formation out and putting the formation back requires two different sets of logic -- the logic of the call and the logic of the changes in the formation structure -- lines to columns, offset weighting, location of the diagonal, maintenance of the matrix size (where appropriate) and changes in the shape of the resulting formation

This is covered in detail for the Parallelogram and for Once Removed concepts in these papers:

• Parallelograms and Offsets Notes and Diagrams
• Once Removed Notes and Diagrams
• Once Removed Dance Strategies

  Click on these names to see these papers on the Internet.

There are many formations where "taking it out" is regularly used. The take out is sometimes a good idea and is common usage. Some of these formations are:

• Blocks - Square Chain Thru
• Stretched Line/Wave - Turn and Deal
• Once Removed - Catch "n"

Let's look at some examples of the different ways of "taking it out".

Blocks

The take out normally means that the centers move out of the center to work the call with the outside members of their block, do the call and then the resulting centers return to the original block, maintaining the diagonal. This may be different people moving back into the center than those who originally started in the center.

Example: In your block, Square Chain Thru

This call cannot be done reasonably without taking it out. However, Square Thru can and should be done without taking it out.

Staggered columns

This is a distorted column setup. The take out is to move the outsides of the stagger into a normal column, do the call, and then put back the original stagger, once again maintaining the diagonal.

Example: In your Staggered Columns, Single Transfer

A take out is not always required. For example, a Walk and Dodge doesn't require a "take out" but can be easily done in the distorted block

Big Block

This is a distorted line setup. The take out is to move the outsides of the distorted line into a normal line, do the call, and then put back the original distorted line, once again maintaining the diagonal.

Example: In Your Big Block, Single Transfer.

Many Big Block calls can only be done reasonably by taking them out.

Once Removed Formations

We'll look at three different calls to see how "take outs" and "concept establishments" are to be danced. We will not examine all the Once Removed situations because there are so many and because the Square Dancing community has not established standards for which take outs are to be used in each situation. This is covered in much more detail in the two Once Removed papers noted above.

Once Removed Pass the Ocean



Notice that there was no take out done. At the very end of the concept/call it is necessary to restablish the Once Removedness of the formation which was present at the start of the call but had disappeared at the end of the call.

Once Removed Turn and Deal



Initially Once Removed Circle to a Wave

This example shows this call with the take out and put back:



This example shows this call with no take out. As you can see, there are two less steps required to do this call.



This call is one you never take out first, but do the call within each Once Removed box. If the call is taken out, then the put back must be done immediately after the first part of the call. This adds, in effect, two more parts to the call and is very confusing to the dancers.

It is generally the case that Initially Once Removed calls are not taken out first.

Stretched Line

The take out involves the two center pairings moving past each other to work with the couples on the outside of the line. There is no "putting it back" required.

Example: Stretched Line - Ah So



This call should be danced by doing the Ah So as the center dancers move into their final position. This should be done as a smooth, flowing motion. Sometimes the caller will tell the dancers to do this every time a Stretched Line call is made. As a result, many dancers do this "take out" automatically whenever they hear "Stretched Line", whether they need it or not. It certainly is not an attribute of a competent dancer to "take out" Stretched Line calls. If the call is "taken out" first, there is no corresponding "put back" required.

Parallelograms and Offset Lines/Columns

These are difficult because three things must be considered in these situations:

• Is the original distorted formation a 2x6 or 3x4 matrix
• What is the direction of the diagonal
• What is the location and direction of the shear line.

Parallelogram Ferris Wheel

For example, the "take out" for the call "In your parallelogram, Ferris Wheel" requires that each line slide together, do the Ferris Wheel then put back the offset maintaining a 12 position formation, the shear line and the diagonal.



Since Ferris Wheel results in columns, you know that you will end up in some kind of offset column where each box has to move to its left. But how far? Since the original formation took up 12 spots on the floor with only 8 spots occupied with people, then the final formation must also take up 12 spots on the floor with 8 occupied with people. Since the final formation for Ferris Wheel is columns, this means a triple columns with 12 spots properly offset as dictated by the need to maintain the shear line and diagonal of the original formation. If each box had moved a little further to its left, then a quadruple column would have resulted containing 16 spots, adding 4 spots to our formation -- 4 more than allowed by our original 12 spot formation.

Offset Line Ferris Wheel



Once again, Ferris Wheel ends up in columns. Since the 12 matrix and the shear line and diagonal must be maintained, the final formation is parallelogram columns.

There are two calls that in themselves are very busy, Motivate and Load the Boat. Both of these calls can be done from parallelograms they? The examples below show these calls done from parallelograms without "taking them out".

Motivate starts in waves, generally, and ends in waves. Load the Boat starts in columns and ends in columns. So why bother taking them out. Taking them out makes the calls a little easier to do because all the diagonal movements are removed. There is no difference between doing these calls normally or in parallelograms except taking it out and putting it back. So why bother? Calling these two calls from parallelograms then becomes an exercise in taking it out and putting it back, not in doing the call.

Parallelogram Motivate

      Without the take out



      With the take out



Parallelogram Load the Boat

      Without the take out



      With the take out



Taking these calls out and putting them back is almost trivial in both cases. Therefore, what is to be gained by taking them out?

Notice that taking it out and putting it back adds two additional steps to the call, disturbing the timing and the flow of the call.

Of course, the basic problem is to define whether or not "taking it out" is proper at all. This is based on the fact that "taking it out" is an exercise in "putting it back", not doing the call from within the distortion. As the examples showed, you have to select the proper way to "take it out" and "put it back" for the particular dancing situation which may include a decision to not "take it out". Additionally, you have to decide whether or not "putting it back" is required.

There is no standard for when to take a call out or whether to take it out at all. In some areas the accepted norm is to take the call out. In the other areas there is a push within some groups to never take anything out. This leads to some spirited discussion at dances which generally tends to break the square down in the course of the discussion.

The Stable concept situation is different from "taking it out" or "putting it back". The Stable concept basically says to do the call without changing your facing direction. Many callers ignore this intent by saying, "Do the call Stable but do it normally and remember your original facing direction and and make sure youu face in that direction at the end of the call." The originator of this concept never intended that this call be used in a manner that required that this be done. The callers do it this way because they can then use any call with Stable. The Stable concept is intended to be used only with calls that can be readily danced without changing facing direction. The put back required by these callers does not return an original offset or establish concept positioning as in Once Removed. It should not be done but often is. You have to live with it.

A New Approach

Taking it out and putting it back are sometimes complicated. So are the various call/concept combinations. Wouldn't it be effective to make dancing of complicated distorted calls and formations less difficult?

Here's how:

• Never take out any formation before doing the concept/call combination.
• Ask the callers to use restraint by only using calls within concepts when the combination can be reasonably done without "taking it out".

Don't expect dancers to take out easy calls like Circulate from Parallelograms and most Stretched Line calls. Dancers must be expected to do the simple calls, then expand into the more difficult calls and concepts when their skills improve. This will get the dancers used to dancing in distorted formations. When they can handle simple distortions, the more difficult distortions will not be a problem. The dancer's mind set will change. Challenge dancing requires distortions. If dancing from distorted formations is not to be done, then remove distortions from challenge dancing completely. If dancers take out the simplest calls, they will never learn to handle the difficult calls.

Telling the dancers to take out distortions is self defeating. The callers are then telling the dancers that there is really no such a thing as distorted formation dancing, only distorted setups which are then danced normally.

Aren't the callers really saying that calls requiring "take outs" are too hard to do without taking it out first? Doesn't this sound silly?

Over the years, some very interesting choreography and positioning has been developed. A lot of inventiveness and cleverness went into this work. At the same time, others devised take outs and cheats to counter all the clever choreography and positioning. Now we are left with a mess. We have definitions for calls and formations that the callers are telling us to ignore. Silliness reigns.

We now have a situation where dancers want to take everything out automatically. My favorite is beginning double pass thru from parallelogram columns where the call is centers Pass Thru. One of the dancers wanted the formation taken out. Extreme? Sure. But indicative of what has taken place.

Conclusion

"Taking it out" is a cheat. Cheats are present in square dancing because dancers don't want to learn how to dance the call from unusual positions, e.g., Left Allemande, Promenade, or won't learn the proper way to execute a call or concept. If the square dance community is condoning "cheats", then let's all get into the game and condone all the cheats, including the grand cheat "taking it out".