Calling Tips

Most people are initially shy about calling, but it's not all that difficult. The problem most people have is remembering to call on the one and to be sure to project the voice. This page gives basic tips about calling to help you get started.

Timing

Almost all the moves in rueda are called on beat one (that is, when you step back in guapea or, in guarrachea, the first step you take towards the inside of the circle) and are executed on the following one, with the few exceptions mentioned below. 

• Bulle largo (in pa' medio) is called on the five and begins on the very next one.

• Prima al medio and prima al medio festival both have a number of moves within them that are called on the five, particularly any call directed at the follows (e.g. mujeres a la derecha, mujeres la flor). An easy way to remember this is to always call towards a particular group (leads or follows) when that group is stepping into the circle.

To move people around the circle faster, you call dame a full eight-count before the current move is finished. For example, from sombrero, you can call dame on the one in which the dile que no ending begins. Additionally, you can call dame y (any move) to have people immediately start a new move after a dame.

Prerequisite Moves (sort of)

While generally there are no requirements to precede one move with another (except in specific sequences such as dame y pasala into botella y tapa), we generally call precede certain moves with other, simpler moves as preparation.

Any variation of dame dos (dame dos festival, dame dos y arriba) is generally preceded by a regular dame.

NOTE: calling dame y abrazala sounds an awful lot like dame y pasala, and can get confusing in noisy situations. Perhaps it is not the best calling sequence for performances either.

NOTE from Maria:  If the performance is in a loud dark place (like a night club), it is risky to call a combination of dame, dame dos y p'arriba, because it has a great potential of creating a mess if people did not hear the whole sequence.

Watching the Group

Keep your eyes on the group to make sure everyone is on the beat and together. If people are off beat, calling any move that involves making noise can often get people back on track, such as pise, pise doble, dame con uno, dos, tres, pecho, etc.

Hand Signals

The most common mistake with new callers is to forget the hand signals with the call, mainly because most people don't bother to learn the hand signals until they start calling. To learn the hand signals, make the signal on your own whenever the instructor demonstrates it when teaching a new move.