What if you were asked to design a new dance form? (Taken from Callerlink 145 April 2001)
Jeff Garbutt

In the late 1980so I tried being a scout leader. It was at a time when the scout movement was reflecting on itself and using several business tools to look at it's future. I remember attending a seminar and one of the facilitators made the following statement:

"Lord Baden Powell was an entrepreneur. England had a problem with street kids at the time. He was given a royal command to form a movement for these kids. He developed the scout movement to fit that need."

This was followed by the question:

"Now imagine that Lord Baden Powell existed in our time, and that we didn't have a scout movement. If he was to develop a new movement today what type of organisation would he develop?"

Now imagine that through some accident of history square dancing had never developed up until now. Imagine if you will that we had the opportunity to develop a new dance format. If we were given the parameters of a dance form that:
- Is team based.
- Based on dancers in some geometric shape.
- Uses a vocabulary of commands to describe the actions that dancers must do.
- Uses a person to cue those commands.
- Suited our time.

What would be created ? Would it be anything like square dancing, as we know it today?

An esoterical question I guess. It may be easier to find an answer to the meaning of life. But still I think it is worthy of thinking about. Maybe by trying to imagine the format of that new dance form, we could think up some ideas to apply to our existing dance format.