How to use Taminations

This example to the right is just a snapshot image, not a working animation. The square dancers are boys, and the round ones are girls. The orange connections are handholds.

I try to follow the Callerlab definitions as closely as possible. Some differences you might see are:

• The dancers may adjust a bit to finish in standard lines, waves, columns, etc. This is what real dancers do as well.
• I try to match the Callerlab timing with the number of tick marks between Start and End, but you might find a few differences. Calls with parts are labeled after Start as Part 2 - 3 etc, other calls that can be fractionalized are labeled with fractions.
• Handholds are drawn very simply and don't show any styling - hands up, couples, forearm, are all shown the same. Some handholds might not start or end exactly when real dancers would.

I have added ratings to some of the calls, ♦ for common usage, ♦♦ for less common, and ♦♦♦ for the most difficult. The ♦ calls are the ones Callerlab has identified as Standard Applications. The others are just my own subjective opinions, based on my experience on calls that are used most often and calls that give dancers the most difficulty.

Tamination Controls and Display

• Square dancers are "boys", circles are "girls". The dark hemisphere show the facing direction. So this example shows right-handed ocean waves with girls in the center. Click on a dancer to show a line for its path.
• These orange connectors are handholds. There's no styling - hands up, couples, forearm etc. are all drawn the same.
• Slow Dancers move at a Slow pace.
• Fast Dancers move at a Fast pace.
• Loop Repeats the animation continuously.
• Grid Shows a grid with 1-dancer-size boxes.
• #4 Numbers couples 1 to 4
• #8 Numbers dancers 1 to 8
• Hexagon One dancer is added for every 2 in the starting formation, so 4 couples becomes 6 couples. There's an excellent article on this by Clark Baker, and more info and graphics by Justin Legakis
• Bi-gon This variation removes half the dancers, so 4 couples becomes 2. A great article by Sue Curtis is required reading if you want to attempt to understand this.
• Phantoms Some Challenge calls have phantoms dancers. For those, you can use the Phantom button to show them.
• Paths Displays the route dancers take as colored lines. This is the same as clicking on each dancer.
• This slider shows the current position in the animation. You can drag it to change the position. You can also use the mouse wheel.
• Multi-part calls have the different parts numbered here. The tick marks show the beats. All animations start on the second tic mark.
• << Click to go to the start of the animation.
• |< Click to go to the start of the current part.
• < Click to go backward a small amount.
• Play Click to play or stop animation.
• > Click to go forward a small amount.
• >| Click to go to the start of the next part.
• >> Click to go to the end of the animation.

Special Features

Click on a dancer for these extra features.

• Click: Show Path
• Alt-Click: Show Path with Bezier control points
• Shift-Click: Barstool This fixes the position of one dancer. The barstool dancer can turn but not move. All the other dancers adjust by moving around the barstool. Clark Baker has a good explanation.
• Control-Click: Compass The complement to barstool - one dancer's facing direction is fixed but can still move forwards, backwards, and sideways. The other dancers have to rotate the setup to adjust. I don't know if this has actually been done, it might not be practical especially for 4 couples.