Dancing The Lateral Concept
Lateral is Working Stable in a named formation. The designated dancers will always have their current facing direction one quarter off from the actual. This is similar to the Nose Concept, in that you must look in a certain direction to visualize the formation. You would perform the action by following the path that you would take, had you really been facing that direction, only you perform it Stable.
If you are in a line and working Lateral, you are really in a column and vice versa.
A facing box of four working Lateral would still be a facing box of four, but everyone’s orientation would be off.
For example, a Lateral Pass Thru ends up being a Mirror Half Sashay. Mirror because of the right shoulder passing rule.
From a right handed column, Working Lateral in Lines Facing, Pass Thru you would slide past each other back to back. Everyone in their head would visualize themselves in Facing Lines (in this case by turning their heads IN) and doing the call.
From T-Bone formations, half of the dancers are normal, and some are designated Lateral. Depending on the call, the resulting formations can be quite surprising, and the dancing should be smooth enough so that callers can still work flow into their choreography. An example is from Outfacing Lines have the Ends Bend, then Ends work Lateral in an Eight Chain and all Pass The Ocean. You would still get a right handed tidal wave. If the ends bent and then passed through you could still do the same call, only the ends (lateral dancers) would have more backing up to do, and the result would be an inverted line on each side of the tidal wave.
Dancers should visualize the formation and dance stabley without memorizing walls, adjusting, and then adjusting back.
I originally set this up so that the Lateral dancers are really Standard in the formation of the non-lateral dancers. This seemed to lead to confusion, so naming the formation removes the ambiguousness. Another idea was to say Right, Left, In, Out, Clockwise Lateral, but I didn’t want a clock in my concept.
From a zero tag I could call All Work Lateral in Right Hand Waves and Swing Thru. This would dance as if you are doing a Stable Zoom, having the leads back up toward their right, and then the new centers doing a Left Pass Thru to result in an eight chain thru formation.
From Lines Back to Back, I could call All Lateral in a Right Handed Column - Transfer the Column. The result would be Right Hand Waves. The belle couple would really be #1 and #2 and they would slide to the right, have the original belle back up while the beau slid to the right in front of the belle. Then that original belle slides left while the beau backs up and they both slide left as they become the trailers in the right hand waves. Of course the movement is larger as they are doing the arc-like motion of the transfer. The original beau couple is visualizing #3 and #4. They slide right, stable roll right with their opposites, continue the do-sa-do action (as they are Laterally casting ¾) and end up as the leads in the waves.
I think it is easier to show than write, but I don’t know how to put the little picture icons in. There are also tons of other examples I could give.
Thoughts?