I'm an ECD caller and I'm very familiar with gender-free calling in the genre. The left-file right-file thing comes from the "Heather and Rose" group in Oregon, which does gender-free English and Scottish. Their foremost exponent is Brooke Friendly, who wrote the CDSS book "Dancing the Whole Dance; she turned me on to this style of calling 25 years ago. [Incidentally, their official definition of "left file and right file" is that as you stand facing your partner, if your left shoulder is pointing up you're in the left file, if the right shoulder is pointing up you're in the right file. Anyway, if you the caller are at the top of the set looking at the dancers, the left file is on your right, right file is on your left. (If you have a choreography where the two larks would do something or the two robins would do something, those people are (or start out) diagonally across from each other, so you can refer to first diagonals (robin position) or second diagonals (lark position) and also identify the four larks or four robins in a square by first and second diagonals.) Most of the time even the proponents of this system will just use room landmarks [which can be well-chosen or ill-chosen; using landmarks on the stage (eg, "piano side") when the room is a lot wider than the stage isn't particularly helpful to those people. "Clock side", "Window Side", etc. [Although discussing this with some Brits I learned that the obvious-to-me "Clock side is the same side as the clock" isn't universal; they thought clock side was the side *facing the clock*, which makes some sense in that the way we do it means you have to identify with the landmark you can't see.] At a small folk festival once, where I had one longish longways set that mostly did the same thing but one of them needed to do a thing first, I identified the lines as (stand at the head of the set waving for attention) "This line" and (pointing) "That line". WOrked fine. Where left file and right file are really useful is in writing down dances so you can follow the thread through for one person without landmarks- #1L retains the number and role through the dance sequence. This style doesn't use lark and robin role names (or any, really) but it seems like some East Coast callers have chosen to do that, just as a drop-in replacement for "gents" and "ladies". Easier on the caller - you really have to rethink your dance instructions in doing it in the more positional way, but a lot of English dancers don't like it. -- Alan -- Alan ________________________________________ From: Julian Blechner via Contra Callers &lt;contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2025 5:53 AM Cc: contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net Subject: [Callers] Re: Gents/Larks and Ladies/Robins lines BEWARE: This email originated outside of our organization. DO NOT CLICK links or attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. I believe some ECD dance callers use "left file" and "right file". Even before Larks/Robins, contra dances I've been to where a dance needed to indicate the lines often just picked landmarks for the walkthrough, and then prompted the move without them, like "windows side arch, door side dive through" for teaching, and "arch and dive" during prompting. In dance, Julian Blechner he/him Western Mass, USA On Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 6:55 AM Rich Goss via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net<mailto:contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net>> wrote: I recently attended a ceilidgh in London. The caller called Flying Scotsman which is a longways set. They arranged it by the taller on the left and designated them 2s. The shorter line 1s. Thought it was a clever way to set it up. They would call something like “2s line arch, 1s line lead through”. This may be common in th UK, but it was new to me (a travelling US person) As far as to say whether certain roll terms should or shouldn’t be used, well…I’m not wading into that. Rich _______________________________________________ Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net<mailto:contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-leave@lists.sharedweight.net<mailto:contracallers-leave@lists.sharedweight.net>

It's definitely much easier to line up improper with Larks and Robins. Rather than saying who's on the left and who's on the right, I have partners hold inside hands and wave at their neighbors — if you can wave with your left hand, you're a lark! If you can wave with your right, you're a robin. In ye olden times when the majority of dances were done in proper formation, to get improper you would line up dancers normally and have the ones cross over. I think in this modern era it makes sense to line people up improper (as dancers in our community are accustomed to) and then — get this — just have the ones cross over. It's no harder than it's ever been! Just reversed. If your community is already dancing with Larks and Robins, there really isn't any need to bring up gents and ladies. On Tue, Oct 14, 2025, 6:54 AM Rich Goss via Contra Callers < contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net&gt; wrote:

I recently attended a ceilidgh in London. The caller called Flying Scotsman which is a longways set. They arranged it by the taller on the left and designated them 2s. The shorter line 1s. Thought it was a clever way to set it up. They would call something like “2s line arch, 1s line lead through”. This may be common in th UK, but it was new to me (a travelling US person) As far as to say whether certain roll terms should or shouldn’t be used, well…I’m not wading into that. Rich