"Rope The Cow" and "Brand The Calf"
I'm directing the musical "meet me in saint louis"
and in the show is the song "skip to my lou" square dance
and I'd like to be true to the dance and moves for authenticity.
Please could you enlighten me on the moves
for "rope the cow" and "brand the calf"?
I hope you can help many thanks for your time in reading this.
There are no such calls that I know of, and I can not find any reference
to them anywhere either. My guess is they're just folksy-sounding names
intended to please the audience.
I did find a 'patter saying' in our Patter Sayings database,
see http://www.ceder.net/choreo/patter_sayings.php?FindText=rope
This is probably what you've got. It's just a rhyme said while dancers are
executing a movement. This is usually done while the dancers are dancing
a time-consuming movement such as 'Promenade':
- Rope the cow, brand the calf,
- Swing your honey once and a half
