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

Browse Items (160 total)

  • Collection: Traditional western
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Cowboy Square Dances of West Texas

This booklet provides an introduction to West Texas square dances. After a detailed glossary, complete with diagrams, the author provides a sample of dances as they might be called. The patter is… View item
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Central City - more photographs

Janie Chandler writes: "My mother, Carol Case, formerly Carol Chandler, originally Carol Angevine, was a Colorado square dancer from way back.The video I watched (from 1955) was a year before my… View item
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Central City - photographs

This collection of photos documents the young dancers who performed in the summers in Central City, Colorado. As opera-goers left the theatre, the dancers would swoop down the main street and bring… View item
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Texas Squares at Pinewoods

In the late 1940s, the Country Dance and Song Society was best known for its work focused on English country dances and ritual dances. Starting in 1949 (see cover of the CDSS newsletter) and then at… View item
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Dean Edwards interview

Dean Edwards was a square caller based in Colorado Springs for some 50 years. In this interview, he talks about his Fun Finders group and his approach to square dancing. Toward the end, he is asked… View item
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Square dance photos, Austin, TX, 1948

Two photographs taken at a square dance in Austin, TX View item
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Lines About Squares - Western Square Dancing

In this article, part of his long-running column, the author looks at the typical programs of Western square dancing in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He discusses the different kinds of patter,… View item
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"So They Gave Up Football"

These two articles were written by Erna Egender, a member of the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers for that group's first trip east, in 1939. The title relates to a ful-page layout created by the Associated… View item
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Ray Shaw biography

This article profiles caller Ray Shaw, brother of Lloyd Shaw. Ray started calling square dances in Los Angeles in 1939, and was featured as the guest on the first television show that Bob Osgood… View item
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Swing Your Partners! (1940 article)

Article published in 1940, profiling Lloyd Shaw and his Cheyenne Mountain Dancers. "One of the most colorful and enthusiastic of the square dance revivalists is Dr. Lloyd Shaw, principal of… View item
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Cheyenne Mountain Dancers in DC

Note: click on the image to get a larger picture.The Cheyenne Mountain Dancers appeared at the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC, in 1939, their first trip to the East from their Colorado… View item
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Cowboy Dance Tunes – excerpt

This was first published as a separate booklet in 1940 to accompany Lloyd Shaw's Cowboy Dances, which appeared in 1939. Shaw provides an introduction.Jim Saxe notes, "The same tune collection,… View item