Dave started calling square dances in 1969. He moved to Florida in 1982 when he turned professional. He ran 16-18 sessions per week of dances, classes, and workshops from beginners class through C4 until the late 90s. During the 16 years of living in Florida, he owned 2 halls in Largo, Florida called “The Square Dance Studio.”
Through 45 years of calling, Dave called in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Scotland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Japan and England. He has been on staff at the National, American, Canadian, Swedish, and Southern Advanced and Challenge square dance conventions as well as Ericcson Jamboree, PACE NORCAL, PACE SOCAL, IPAC and the European Square and Round Dance College in Cham Germany. Also Dave has taught callers’ schools in many places throughout the world. He has called in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
His traveling was mostly due to the worldwide notoriety made possible by calling at the National Advanced and Challenge Convention (NACC) usually held each year in Virginia Beach.
NACC:
This convention was unique to square dancing as it was the only convention in the world where the dancers would vote on the callers they wanted on staff for the following year. The top 10 callers would become the Staff Callers, the next 5 callers were made Associate Staff Callers and the remaining callers would be Non-Staff Callers. Each of the Staff Callers would be assigned 40 tips at the convention, the Associate Staff callers would be assigned 10 tips per convention and the non-staff callers would be allowed to call at the Non-Staff dance on Wednesday before the official start of the convention and be allowed to choose one tip at the level of their choice at the main convention. The objective was for the “new kids on the block” to be able to showcase their talents with the hopes they would be voted on for a higher position in subsequent years. Although most of the staff did not like the political and somewhat cut-throat political aspects of the convention, it was and remains to this day the only square dance convention in the world offering a place where callers could showcase their talents and hope that their hard work would be recognized by accumulating votes. Being on staff at the National Advanced and Challenge Convention would automatically propel the resulting staff to world renown status as dancers from all over the world would attend the convention and the 10000 flyers for the next year would be disseminated throughout the world giving the callers’ name instant recognition.
Toward the end of Dave’s long career as a full-time professional square dance caller he bought a square dance resort in Sweden called Bödabaden. This was a 100 bed hotel, had 4 dance floors, 2 bars, and a camping area. Due to the popularity of square dancing diminishing from the resort’s founding in 1980, diversifying the program at the resort was essential to its continued existence. So Bödabaden converted from a square dance resort to a dance resort offering 1 week dances/workshops in ballroom dancing, line dancing, clogging, round dancing and square dancing. This proved to be just what was needed until the world financial crisis in the 2000s hit.
Shortly after the purchase of Bödabaden in November of 2009, Dave went to Mesa, AZ to call with Bill Haynes a program with a workshop and a dance at each level ranging from A2 through C3B totaling 10 session per week.
Dave retired from calling in 2014, but continued to call to fulfill contracts for the next 2 years.