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

Browse Items (77 total)

  • Subject is exactly "Southern / Appalachian / Big sets"
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"Southern Appalachian"- overview of structure

The author describes the overall structure of a southern Appalachian big circle dance: an opening sequence, the second phase with two-couple figures, and the closing sequence that involves all the… View item
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"The Square Dance" - David Hendrix, 1951

East Tennessee caller D. B., Hendrix provides a general introduction to square dancing. He writes, "Square dancing is easy to learn. Anyone who can march or keep time to music can learn it. in… View item
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Susan Spalding Appalachian Traditional Dance Video Collection, 1988-2002

This collection consists of video recordings of interviews and community dance activities in eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee recorded at various times, 1988-2002. The… View item
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It's Fun To Square Dance

This booklet is profusely illustrated with photographs and diagrams, making the dance figures easy to understand. Lunsford was the founder in 1928 of the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville,… View item
Website

Kentucky Square Dances

An early (1928) collection of figures collected "from callers in Kentucky who are familiar with the old square dances as they are danced in the Kentucky Mountains and elsewhere in the state."This is… View item
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Let's Square Dance – Claude Chadwick

This 24 page booklet was produced by Claude S. Chadwick, a Texas native and a professor of biology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He begins with an overview of the activity: "All we need for… View item
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Smoky Mountain Square Dances

NOTE: This is a large file and might take a while to load.To read the actual booklet, choose the DOWNLOAD link or select the source file located by scrolling to Additional Files.This collection,… View item
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Traditional Square Dance of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

Detailed description of big set dances on Ocracoke Island, and an attempt in 1996 to re-create a dance tradition that had dies out. From the opening page: "The Ocracoke Island square dance is… View item
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West Virginia Square Dances by Robert G. Dalsemer

Dalsemer describes dance figures as done in five rural West Virginia communities in the mid- to late 1970s and reports on their regular dance events, including programming, type of audience, price and… View item
Website

78-rpm Recordings of Southern Dance Callers (1924-33)

This collection of nearly 100 old recordings was created by Phil Jamison to accompany the publication of his book, Hoedowns, Reels and Frolics (2015). The book tells the story behind the square… View item
Website

A Look at Southern Squares

Bill Martin writes: "These many pages represent all the information I could find about Southern mountain square dancing. Over the years I continue to find errors and clueless guesswork here and there.… View item
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A Tennessee Square Dance

Caller David Hendrix presents a overview of typical figures that he would use in a "square dance" in his region of East Tennessee.He notes that the dances in his region are related to the… View item