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

Browse Items (499 total)

  • Collection: MWSD
Document

Basic Movements of Square Dancing

This early handbook from Sets in Order provides detailed instructions for 20 basic figures, "the foundation movements for most square dancing." As such, it offers an overview of what was considered… View item
Document

Chaney scrapbook & photo album

Duane and Shirley Chaney (Council Bluffs, Iowa) were enthusiastic square dancers in the early 1950s. They attended Square Dance Institutes with Les Gotcher at Kirkwood Lodge (Osage Beach, Missouri) in… View item
Still Image

Square Dance equipment

This collection of photographs illustrates some of the electronic equipment used by square dance callers-- speakers, speaker stands, record players, tape decks, microphones with different… View item
Document

Square Dancing Standard and Experimental Guidelines

A flood of new calls in the early 1970s led a group called Square Dance Systems to publish a catalogue of calls, an attempt to bring order to an increasingly-complex universe of new figures. Square… View item
Document

Hand position in MWSD

The formation of CALLERLAB in 1974 established definitions and helped modern square dancing become more standardized. This does not mean that everything fell neatly into place! The cover illustration… View item
Website

Stan Winchester - C4 Singing Squares

Stan Winchester was a MWSD dancer who created a large body of singing squares for the C4 community. These dancers sometimes share a series of recorded audiotapes with prerecorded calls, and Winchester… View item
Still Image

Square Dance Camps - 1957

This is a listing of square dance camps in 1957. Interested viewers can compare it with the Sets in Ordereditorial from 1951. View item
Moving Image

Patter - Ted Lizotte - Tech Squares

Caller, Ted Lizotte. Recorded March 5, 2011, at a Tech Squares weekend, East Hill Farm, Troy, NH. Tech Squares is the MWSD club on the campus of Mass Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. This… View item
Moving Image

Sweet Home Alabama - Ted Lizotte - Tech Squares

Caller, Ted Lizotte. Recorded March 5, 2011, at a Tech Squares weekend, East Hill Farm, Troy, NH. Ted Lizotte is the club caller for Tech Squares, the MWSD club on the campus of Massachusetts… View item
Document

Round Robin correspondence

Long before the internet, a group of a dozen or so square dance callers around the country exchanged ideas through a series of Round Robin letters. (Note: the Square Dance History Project would dearly… View item
Moving Image

Great Chicago Crossfire, gay fly-in, 1989

Television coverage (The 10% Show, a gay-focused channel) of The Great Chicago Crossfire, 1989, a square dance fly-in hosted by the Chi-Town Squares, a gay square dance club. Among the callers shown… View item
Document

Today's Whirling Confuses Old-Time Square Dancers

This 1957 newspaper story from central Massachusetts describes a dance culture in transition, as traditional New England square dancing was meeting up with -- and in some cases being replaced by-- the… View item