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

Browse Items (1939 total)

Website

Grand Square magazine

Grand Square As a means of communication among the widely scattered Northern New Jersey Square Dancers Association membership, Grand Square was created in March 1959 by Bob Keck. Grand Square became… View item
Document

Lloyd Shaw and the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers

As superintendent of the public K-12 Cheyenne Mountain School in Colorado Springs from 1916 to 1951, Lloyd Shaw earned national attention. After coaching a successful football team for several years,… View item
Website

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
Website

Inverness County Dance Project - Cape Breton

The Inverness Country Dance Project was created in 1986, a detailed ethnographic look at the music and dance traditions of Cape Breton. Now housed at the Beaton Institute, a "cultural heritage… View item
Website

Northern Junket

In a labor of love, Ralph Page single-handedly published 165 issues of this journal from 1949 through 1984. The University of New Hampshire's Library of Traditional Music and Dance has digitized and… View item
Still Image

A Callers' Association? - 1952 discussion

https://archive.org/details/northernjunket38page/page/16/mode/1upCALLERLAB, the association of modern western square dance callers, was established in 1974. However, discussions about creating caller… View item
Sound

Docey-Doe Hoedown - Lloyd Shaw

A YouTube site that plays Lloyd Shaw calling from his Cowboy Dances album View item
Document

Calling for Modern Square Dancing - Jim Mayo

Author Jim Mayo writes:"This book is, I believe, the first "Caller Text" that was written for modern (as different from traditional) square dance callers. The draft was written in 1961 & 62 which… View item
Website

Sets in Order archive

The complete collection of Sets in Order (which changed its name to Square Dancing in 1968) is available online through the University of Denver. A duplicate set is now housed on the Internet Archive.… View item
Website

Arizona Square Dance - 1954

This item contains images of Phoenix college students square dancing outside of the Arizona Star at Western Saddle Club on October 28, 1954 in Phoenix, Arizona. The link takes you to the nine photos… View item
Sound

"Wild Bill" Reagan

Duane "Wild Bill" Reagan was a square dance caller perhaps best known for his performance at the Expo 74 festival in Spokane, Washington. Featured here are two clips of his calling at that event, a… View item
Document

"The Texas Cattle Country and Cowboy Square Dance" – Olcutt Sanders

This article, scholarly yet accessible, provides an excellent look at square dancing in west Texas in the late 1800s. He starts with a look at the conditions that set this region apart from… View item