Round-dance Choreography
Craig Pierson was involved with the Billings Square and Round-dance community during the 1990’s, publishing their "Grapevine" newsletter, writing choreography for 26 published Round-dances, and preparing detailed cue sheets for dozens of customers, nationwide. Round dancing is a form of social ballroom dancing in which the dance movements (steps) are choreographed precisely to the music, and those steps are announced by a “cuer,” as we dance. The presence of the cuer makes a round dance seem different from the usual ballroom dance because all the couples are dancing in unison and the dance choreography can be relatively complex. Rounds include most of the popular ballroom rhythms, such as foxtrot and waltz, cha-cha, jive, two-step and rumba.
The cues spoken to the dancers are called “Head Cues”, and a folder with that name has these (pdf) for Pierson’s dances in another folder called “Rounds with cues”. The files in “Rounds with cues” include an mp3 file of the music only, and another mp3 with the cues over the music. Reading a “Head Cues” page, while playing a cued dance allows you to hear how it all fits together, and possibly perform the dance.
The detailed movement (step and dance position information) is contained in the “Cue Sheet”. These can be obtained by web searching Roundalab > Dance database search > Proceed to search > click Choregrapher blank and type in Pierson to access the cue sheets written by Craig Pierson and those written with Laurel Hanson. There are over 3000 cue sheets in that database. The cue sheets (pdf) can also be printed.
Finally, the definitions of the boldface abbreviated “Head Cues” found in the cue sheets and spoken as Head Cues, are in the “Roundalab Abbreviations” file also in this folder.
The opening 3-4 minutes of the video in the Square and Round Dancing article are the dance titled “Hollywood Carousel” cued by Larry Sperry for Craig and MaryAnn as they dance at their wedding reception. This dance is NOT in cued form in the “Rounds with cues” folder.. Following is a Head Q's page for our wedding dance, "Hollywood Carousel".
 | 1992 World SD Convention - the Hague photos by Perry Kullman Top: Ruby, Klaus (tour guide) and Craig Bottom: Ruby Kullman and Craig Pierson dancing during a cruise passing Die Lorelei on the Rhine. |