Square Dance History Project
The rich story of North American square dance finally has a home in the digital age.

Browse Items (21 total)

  • Temporal Coverage is exactly "19th century - middle"
Document

Social Dancing in Early Minnesota

Scholarly yet accessible article, with illustrations, published in Minnesota History magazine, providing a detailed look at social dance in Minnesota in mid-nineteenth century. Also available online.… View item
Document

Shall We Dance? - Maine, 19th century

This article, written by theMaine Memory Network Curator and Historian for the Maine Historical Society, takes two mid-19th books as a focal point for looking at etiquette and social status as… View item
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Beseda quadrille

These are two videos demonstrating the Czech Beseda quadrille from mid-19th century, here performed by a group that rehearsed with noted Czech dance leader Jitka Bonušova. The date of composition for… View item
Website

Square Dancing in the 1800s

Fred Feild is a long-time caller and square dance enthusiast; now living in Tucson, he was instrumental in creating the Chicago Barn Dance Company in the mid-1970s. In recent years, he has started… View item
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Origin of Appalachian Square Dance

By ":Appalachian square dance," the author is referring to big circle or big set dances, not specifically to four-couple squares. Thurston rejects the notion that Appalachian squares did not… View item
Still Image

Quadrille - J. Scott Skinner, 1905

The People’s Ball Room Guide, published by musician James Scott Skinner in 1905, is a description of 19th century ballroom dances.A website devoted to Skinner's work includes a series of videos… View item
Website

Contemporary Accounts of Dance From the American West in the Nineteenth Century

Doctoral dissertation based on primary sources; includes a look at dances on the pioneer trails, in logging camps in mining camps, rural social life and urban social life. From the author's… View item
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Lancers

Dance Discovery, a St Louis, Missouri troupe, dances all five figures at a Lincoln program given at Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville on November 25, 2007. The dance is… View item
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Beseda Quadrille, part I

František Bonuš, a noted dance pedagogue from Prague, led a quadrille workshop in Berea, Kentucky in 1987. The video of the entire workshop is lengthy and has been edited and divided into nine parts.… View item
Website

Nineteenth Century Social Dance (article)

Library of Congress overview of dance history, including links to specific books in their collection. View item
Document

"The Texas Cattle Country and Cowboy Square Dance" – Olcutt Sanders

This article, scholarly yet accessible, provides an excellent look at square dancing in west Texas in the late 1800s. He starts with a look at the conditions that set this region apart from… View item
Website

Peter Beemer manuscript - Idaho

This is a collection of mid-19th century dance tunes from a remote Idaho location; as such, it is a useful record of the music being used for dances of the period. This website also contains… View item