Browse Items (920 total)

Benjamin Lovett, the noted dancing master who was hired by Henry Ford to promote social dancing, leads Life on the Ocean Wave, also known as the Head Two Ladies Cross Over. The musicians are the Henry Ford's Old-Time Dance Orchestra. Lovett wrote…

This look at the "allemande alphabet" is by Dick Pasvolsky, writing in The American Dance Circle, quarterly publication of the Lloyd Shaw Foundation. A concise listing of the figures can be found here; Pasvolsky adds more commentary and explanations…

Famed animator Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, and many more) was an ardent square dance enthusiast, part of the southern California boom in squares in the early 1950s. This is an excerpt from a letter to his…

A series of photographs taken at an American Squares summer camp session, plus one postcard

More material from the American Squares summer camps:
• A report on the 1950 camps
• A roster of participants from the 1950 Minnesota camp
• Diploma awarded to a camper

American Squares magazine sponsored a series of summer dance camps for eager square dancers. Faculty included Jimmy Clossin, Ralph Piper, Charley Thomas, Fred and Mary Collette, and Luke Lukaszewski.Items in this collection include:• Brochures…

Cover and label of instrumental album produced by Jimmy Clossin

Although he never recorded albums featuring his calling, Jimmy Clossin did produce recordings of instrumental music. These clips come from Square Dances without Calls (1940), with music by the Blue Bonnet Playboys. The first clip is Ragtime Annie;…

A collection of photos showing Jimmy Clossin at Camp Ihduhapi, Loretto, Minnesota, August 27 - September 4, 1950. Other instructors at the camp, which was sponsored by American Squares magazine, were Charley Thomas, Ralph Piper, and Fred and Mary…

Jimmy Clossin was an influential Texas caller who unfortunately never recorded commercially. (This Square Dance History Site would dearly love to post clips from live recordings—please contact us if you know of any.) Shown here are several…

In this re-creation of dances from 1917, the Berea College Country Dancers, under the direction of Ethel Capps, show several figures described by Cecil Sharp in his Country Dance Book V. Sharp first saw dancing at Pine Mountain Settlement School,…

This is the first in a series of videos posted from a 1989 program of singing squares presented by caller Debbie Gray and the Deb-U-Tones (vocals by Alice La Pierre and Julia Huestis). Musicians are Jack O'Connor, banjo; Mary Lea, fiddle; and Peter…