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

Browse Items (154 total)

  • Subject is exactly "General - Dance and Culture"
Document

Square Dances for White Collars (1941 article)

Article in Time magazine (1941) describing popularity of square dancing, evidenced by record sales (Victor, Columbia, Decca) and the work of teacher and caller Lawrence Loy. View item
Sound

Al Brundage - dance history

Note: The audio file takes a while to load, so be patient.This recording documents a presentation by Al Brundage about the history of square dancing. The tape label has no information about the date… View item
Document

Al Brundage recollections

Al Brundage wrote these recollections of his experiences growing up in Connecticut and the growth of square dancing. His story includes discovering square dance as a boy, followed by the whole… View item
Moving Image

Call & Answer - Amanda Lovelee

Minneapolis based artist, Amanda Lovelee believes finding, preserving and constructing a space for physical connection is an urgent issue. As a society that faces the collapse of communities how do we… View item
Document

Hipsters and Traditional/Old- Time Square Dance

The author looks at the rising popularity of square dance among young hipsters and sees in it, and its Appalachian roots, a desire for a homeplace :"For one such group, the ill- defined, often… View item
Moving Image

Using squares at a contra dance - Beth Molaro

Caller Beth Molaro, of Asheville, NC, is a well-known caller who loves calling both contras and squares. In this clip, talking with Dennis Merritt, she explains some of her thinking that goes into… View item
Document

Feature Square Dancer - Nebraska, 1956

These are excerpts from two early issues (Vol. 1, #1 and #4, both 1956) of the Feature Square Dancer, a newspaper published by Bill Shilling, brother of Colorado caller Marvin Shilling. To see similar… View item
Document

Square Dancing at Maryland Line

Bob Dalsemer describes old time square dancing at the Maryland Line Fire Hall in the town of Maryland Line, MD as he encountered it in 1974.You may also be interested in a similar article describing… View item
Document

The Buzzards' Glory Barn Dance 1928–1966

In the early 1970s, Bob Dalsemer heard about a dance series in Albanstown, northern Baltimore County, Maryland; the dances were no longer being held so he interviewed two sources to create this… View item
Document

Old Time Square Dancing on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

Author Bob Dalsemer discovers a long tradition of the "big circle" square dance on this island off the North Carolina coast, far from the Appalachian Mountains where it is usually… View item
Still Image

Pardners - Jerry Lewis square dance

The 1956 film Pardners, starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, originally had a square dance sequence with Jerry Lewis as the caller, testimony to the role that square dancing had in American popular… View item
Document

Square Dance Camps - 1951

As the wave of square dancing took off in the post World War II era, callers and organizers responded with a number of weekend and weeklong camps to cater to the growing interest. This editorial from… View item