The Part They Don't Show in the Brochures
I remember my first real gig — a county fair in central Ohio, 2009. I'd been dancing for three years, thought I was hot stuff. Then the caller threw out a sequence I'd never heard, my partner and I crashed into the couple next to us, and a twelve-year-old in the audience laughed. Not cruelly, just... honestly. That kid taught me more about performing than any workshop ever did.
Square dancing as a career sounds absurd to most people. Your parents will worry. Your non-dancer friends will politely nod. But here's the thing — people said the same thing about breakdancing in the '80s, and now it's in the Olympics. Square dancing has a smaller spotlight, sure. But a spotlight's still a spotlight.
Get Obsessively Good at the Fundamentals
Skip this step and everything else falls apart. I'm not talking about knowing the calls — any weekend dancer knows the calls. I mean owning them so thoroughly that you could do-si-do in your sleep, on a wet floor, while carrying on a conversation.
Find a caller who scares you a little. Someone who pushes tempo, mixes unexpected sequences, doesn't coddle. My breakthrough came from a guy named Dale who called in a VFW hall outside Columbus. No air conditioning. Terrible sound system. But the man could make a square move like liquid, and dancing under him twice a week for a summer did more than four years of club nights ever did.
Figure Out What You Actually Want to Do
"Square dance career" covers a lot of ground. Caller? Performer? Instructor? Competition circuit? Choreographer for cruise lines? (That's a real thing, by the way.)
I spent two years trying to be everything — teaching beginners on Tuesdays, performing at festivals on weekends, practicing calling routines at home at night. Burned out hard. The moment I committed to teaching and choreography exclusively, things clicked. Not because those paths are better, but because they were mine.
Talk to people doing different roles. Shadow them. Ask the uncomfortable questions about money and scheduling. The square dance world is small enough that most folks will take your call — literally.
Show Up Where It Matters
Conventions. Weekend festivals. State-level events with three hundred dancers and twenty callers. You need to be there, and not as a wallflower.
Here's a counterintuitive tip: volunteer to floor manage or help with setup before you volunteer to dance. Organizers remember the person who arrived early and stacked chairs. They don't remember another face in a square.
Social media helps, sure. Post videos, tag the right people. But nothing replaces a handshake and a real conversation. The gig that launched my teaching career came from a twenty-minute chat over burnt coffee at a national convention in Reno.
Your Look Matters More Than You Think
Dance is visual. Period.
I'm not saying you need rhinestones on everything (though if that's your thing, go wild). I'm saying you need to look intentional. Matched outfits for your square. A consistent aesthetic. Something that makes people remember you when the music stops.
Early on, my square wore plain white shirts and jeans. We thought we were being "authentic." What we actually were was forgettable. The year we switched to vintage Western shirts with our square name embroidered on the pocket — suddenly promoters were calling us.
Teach Before You Feel Ready
You're never going to feel like an expert. Teach anyway.
I started a beginner class when I'd been dancing for four years. Felt like a fraud the entire first month. But teaching forces you to articulate what your body already knows, and that process deepens your own understanding in ways pure practice never does.
Plus, students become your network. My most loyal supporters — the people who book me, recommend me, show up to every event — started as nervous beginners in my Tuesday night class.
Don't Be a Museum Piece
Traditional square dancing is beautiful. It's also not the only version that exists.
I've seen callers blend hip-hop beats with classic calls and watched a floor of dancers who ranged from twenty-two to seventy-five absolutely tear it up. I've seen choreography set to country, EDM, even classical. The purists will grumble. Let them.
What won't work is pretending the world stopped changing in 1985. Learn the history — genuinely, deeply — and then push it forward.
Perform Until It Stops Feeling Scary
Stage fright doesn't go away. It just gets quieter.
I still get nervous before big events. Fifteen years in, my hands shake a little while I'm setting up. But the gap between "terrified" and "functionally terrified" closes with repetition. Every small-town festival, every library demonstration, every school assembly — they all count. They're all reps.
And honestly? The small gigs teach you more. You learn to read a room of thirty people who didn't come to see you, who are half-distracted, whose kids are running around. If you can win that room, a convention floor is easy.
Protect the Machine
Your body is your instrument, and square dancing is more athletic than outsiders realize. Two hours of calling and dancing burns serious calories and taxes your joints.
Stretch. Cross-train. I started swimming three times a week after a knee scare in 2018, and it changed everything — more stamina, fewer aches, better sleep. Don't wait for an injury to start taking this seriously.
Mental health too. This career has lonely stretches. Booking droughts. Events where the energy is flat and you question every choice you've made. Having people you can call — other dancers, a therapist, whoever — matters more than any technique workshop.
Find Someone Who's Done It
Mentorship isn't optional. It's oxygen.
I owe a ridiculous debt to a caller named Margaret who took me under her wing when I was twenty-six. She didn't sugarcoat things. Told me my timing was off, my stage presence was stiff, my choreography was safe. All true. All things I needed to hear from someone whose opinion I respected enough to actually listen.
Seek out the Margarets of the square dance world. Most veterans in this community are generous with their knowledge — you just have to ask.
Stay Hungry
Complacency kills careers. The day you stop learning is the day you start fading.
I take at least two intensive workshops a year outside my comfort zone. Last year it was Appalachian flatfooting. The year before, contemporary partner work. Neither is square dancing, technically. Both made me a better square dancer.
Read the old calling manuals from the '50s and '60s. Watch footage of the greats. Understand why certain sequences work, not just how to call them. Depth is what separates a working dancer from a great one.
---
Here's what I'll leave you with: this path is weird, niche, and deeply fulfilling. You won't get rich. You won't get famous. But you'll spend your life doing something that makes people laugh, connect, and move their bodies — and that's not nothing. That might actually be everything.
The kid at the Ohio county fair? I tracked him down eight years later at a state convention. He was dancing in his first square. We laughed about it. Then we danced together.
That's the career. That's the whole point.
