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

Browse Items (1950 total)

Document

Square Dancing Atop Lookout Mountain

Article by Karen terHorst describes dancing in New Salem, Georgia, an historically-isolated community above Chattanooga, TN. The article is based on her visit to the dance in the 1970s. The dance… View item
Moving Image

Square Dancing in Sudbury, Ontario

This film, made in 1959 by members of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union Local 598 in Sudbury, Ontario, illustrates the wide range of programming that the union provided for the community.… View item
Website

Square Dancing in the 1800s

Fred Feild is a long-time caller and square dance enthusiast; now living in Tucson, he was instrumental in creating the Chicago Barn Dance Company in the mid-1970s. In recent years, he has started… View item
Website

Square Dancing in the Kentucky Foothills

Based on extensive interviews, audio files and video recordings, the author has compiled a detailed look at dancing in the area around Berea, Kentucky. Her introduction provides a broad look at the… View item
Document

Square Dancing in the Park

Short article describing the start of Ed Durlacher's program of teaching square dancing in Riverside Park in New York City. The Additional File ("Youth and the Squares") will provide a… View item
Sound

Square Dancing in Western New York

The New York Folklore Society produced a number of five-minute radio documentaries featuring the folklife (skills, traditions, stories, music, dance, folk art and material items) found in New York… View item
Document

Square Dancing Is Fun, But--Teach An Easy One First! (1940 article)

Article from 1940 promoting the virtues of square dancing and pointing out the necessity of teaching simple dances first. The author suggests: "The art of imitation must be used in teaching… View item
Document

Square Dancing Is NOT Out of This World

This is the text of a presentation by Joe Lewis at the 1959 National Square Dance Convention, part of a discussion of the future of square dancing.Lewis points out that the majority of dancers at the… View item
Moving Image

Square Dancing on Pike's Peak - 1963

Square dancing at 14,000' — footage put online by the Pikes Peak Library. The actual dance footage starts at 1:17 in the footage, and lasts for about a minute. The added sound track is… View item
Document

Square Dancing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

This is a detailed description of square dancing in the mid-1940s in the area around Salisbury, Maryland, located on the Eastern Shore, in particular dances that took place at Fruitland, four miles… View item
Website

Square Dancing on the South Side

THis radio program looks at the history of modern square dancing within the Black community in Chicago, with many groups leading up to the formation of Southside Squares. It includes an interview with… 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