Below are some pitfalls that can be found in the dance Running Bear. If you find additional pitfalls please email them to me at the address at the bottom of the page.

1. The call Divide (in line 6) has been replaced today with the call Separate. For the Basic Program it is usually taught or called called to go around one or two dancers, not to Star Thru at a different location. But do use the call Separate and perhaps walk dancers through it.
2. Dancers in 2020 are used to circling left after a Rollaway call. Consider replacing Rollaway on line 2 with the call Half Sashay.
3. Note that lines 4 to 9 are danced with half the couples sashayed. Where are hehe/sheshe warnings needed? Where Dick Jones says "trust me" in the preceding patter is a good indication that some helper words are needed for the sashayed positions. It was noted that the sashayed position comes "without warning" by the Rollaway call and then half the couples are cleverly, and without warning, sashayed back with the Star Thru call in line 3.
   ____________________________ Added 4/3/20
   
4. On a Dive Thru followed by a Square Thru dancers are used to doing a Square Thru 3 hands, not 4. Consider saying Square Thru 4 although you shouldn't have to. You can see this mistake being made by the dancers in the far square in the video at one point.
5. The speed of the music is very important. The timing is tight. In the videos you can see that at 117bpm dancers are comfortable whereas at 127bpm the caller has no chance of fitting the choreography to the beats. But what are the specific speed problems? Poor timing? Bad body flow? Call processing and reaction time? Call stacking?
    
   A look at the call sheet with dancer action shows timing is correct, body flow is correct, call processing time is increased where needed, which leaves agility of the dancers as the main speed problem. Slow the dance to a speed dancers are used to.
   _____________________________Added 4/4/20
   
6. In line 6 the sides are referenced. Is it the original sides or those currently at the side position? The call sheet should be changed to to say "outsides" or "others"
7. Also in line 6, to get the timing right, the "outsides" need to be doing the Separate and Star Thru WHILE the others are squaring thru. Thus the WHILE needs to be added to the call sheet. This simultinaity adds to the degree of diffaculty at this point.
   _____________________________Added 4/6/20
   
8. It was noted that in line 4 if dancers do a Highland Fling dosado they will not be in position to do a circle left 1/2. Dancers should be warned to dance the calls correctly.
9. When the dance first came out if you regulated the speed of the dance the pitch also changed so callers were limited in what speeds they could use. With digital music and computers that is not a problem so slower speeds could be used to avoid the speed pitfall.
10. Since it is known that many dancers will fail to do the dance, it should not be the last dance of the night.
11. It was mentioned that the dance is a classic and if the call sheet is changed there might not be the same challenge that made the dance popular in the first place. However, some of the challenges to today's dancers were not challenges when the dance was first created. Why not eliminate the new challenges by changing the call sheet and just leave the original challenges, shashayed hehe/sheshe formation, sashayed square thru 4 while others separate, tight timing.

Special thanks to Di Green, John Harden, Rick Hampton, Daryl Clendenin, Daniel Robinson, Rod Shuping, Nasser Shukayr, Bill Garrison, John Dehn, and Ron Renee Bell-Roemer for identifying some of these pitfalls as part of a thread on the Callers In Training facebook page April 3. and April 6, 2020.