Modern western square dance dance, like traditional square dance, is directed by a "caller". In modern western square dance the caller strings together a sequence of individual "square dance calls" to make a figure or sequence. These calls are the building blocks of the choreography that is danced by the individuals – square dancers – in the squares. There are eight people (four pairs of males and females, traditionally) in each square; at a dance there may be many squares. Generally speaking, each of these squares dances independently of each other, with the exception of specialty or "gimmick" dances, where there might be some
Modern western square dance variations fall into the following basic categories: Keywords: cowboy dance, frontier, folk dances from Europe, new developments Keywords: Henry Ford, Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw, the publication of "Cowboy Dances", saving the form from extinction, Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw's Cheyenne Mountain Dancers, courses for square dance teachers Keywords: World War II's returning veterans and the home/family culture of the 1950s, "transition from the traditional, visiting couple type of dancing into all-four-couple-working kind of dancing in the 1950s" (Herb Egender), the amplifier, phonograph, square dance records, Square Dancing Magazine (formerly Sets in Order), Step By Step Through Modern Square Dancing (Jim Mayo) Modern western