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"
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"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
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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
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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
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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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Frontier Dances - Bob Cook

A native of Colorado, Bob Cook's dancing experiences go back to the time when he was a seventh grader at the Cheyenne Mountain School. He was a member of the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers from 1939 to… View item
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History of Square Dancing - Ralph Page

Between 1972 and 1974, Ralph Page wrote a series of essays entitled A History of Square Dancing. For ease in downloading, we have collected them into "chapters" that group together similar topics.… View item
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Iowa dance program, 1864

Mid-19th century dance programs were comprised primarily of quadrilles and couple dances. Here is one such program from Des Moines, Iowa, 1864. PROGRAMME. Part First. GRAND… View item
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John Putnam, Black fiddler and caller

John Putnam (c. 1817–1895) was born into slavery and by the 1850s was living in Greenfield, MA, where he worked as a barber. He played left-handed fiddle and Putnam's Orchestra played for dances… View item
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La naissance du cotillon et du quadrille, contredanses françaises

Article (in French) by Simonne Voyer, who is the author of La danse traditionnelle dans l'est du Canada: quadrilles et cotillons. For a translation in English by Susan Kevra, click here. 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
Website

Nineteenth Century Social Dance (article)

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