[fbkrbpqs] Encoding data in rueda contra dancing

The dance consists of two phases.  In the first phase, form a single ring alternating genders.  Dance with the person to each side.  The purpose of this phase is simply to remember the order of the ring: everyone should remember who their neighbors were.  There is no progression in this phase.  We take advantage of the evolutionary ability to remember people of the opposite gender with whom one has interacted.

Alternatively, the first phase could be arranged as two alternating concentric rings so everyone should memorize their two tangential neighbors and one radial neighbor.  This provides additional redundancy.

In the second phase, divide the ring into two concentric rings: a ring of one gender facing a concentric ring of the other gender.  Break the rings to form 4 person sets containing two people of each gender.  Clever choreography can make this elegant.

Within each foursome, there are two ways of forming couples of opposite genders: this is how data is encoded.  Each foursome encodes 1 bit. There is therefore 4-way redundancy in memorizing the bit. There's a bit (pun intended) of choreography to shuffle the foursome so that partners are together.  One way is to have the clockwise facing people cross over (California twirl), then form the partnerships either tangentially or radially.

The choreography within a foursome should (unlike most contra dances) emphasize moves (e.g., swing) with the partner far more than moves with the neighbor.  The goal is to remember who the partner was, again taking advantage of the evolutionary ability to remember people of the opposite gender with whom one has interacted.

We can encode more data by having dancers progress to new sets.  Form the same-gender rings again, preserving order.  The rings slide past each other 2 places in opposite directions until a new set of 4 is formed wherein we have another opportunity to encode 1 bit in how the partnerships are formed. This is kind of like Becket but with same-gender lines.

One does not progress (as normally done in contra dances in columns) with a partner of the opposite gender.  It turns out pairs of people of the same gender progress together and will see each other in each new set, but this is unimportant to the dancers. It may be useful for the choreographer who can utilize known techniques of pairs of people progressing up and down the line.

Clever choreography can conceal the look of rings sliding past each other.  Can the whole dance be reorganized into a linear column as is traditional?

n dancers, n/4 sets, so each progression encodes n/4 bits before it loops around again.  Total n*n/16, so 48 dancers can memorize 128 bits (actually 144).  Every dancer must remember n/4 bits plus the order of the ring in phase 1.  (Perhaps repeat phase 1 at the end once everyone has gone all the way around.)

Dance steganography. Note well that, unlike the obvious way to encode data into a dance requiring the dancers to memorize choreography (not easy to do for most people, and people quickly forget), this scheme assumes the choreography is "public", and the dancers merely need to memorize people.