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

Browse Items (1925 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
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Modern Square Dancing Is Different

This is an article published in the Autumn 1966 issue of Mike and Monitor, the newsletter of the National Capital Area Square Dance Leaders Association. Starting with a description of the origins of… View item
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Southern Missouri Jig Dancing

This 28 page booklet was Volume One of a projected series on Traditional Dance in Missouri. It is based on extensive fieldwork by the authors in two southern Missouri counties, Wayne and Douglas. The… View item
Still Image

Some Practical Considerations

This short essay was part of Square and Round Dance, Calls and Explanations, a bookled created by MacGregor Records and distributed along with some of the albums of square dance recordings. We've been… View item
Sound

Fundamentals of Square Dancing

Bob Ruff and Jack Murtha collaborated on a detailed program of teaching square dancing using a series of recordings. The clips in this item are taken from their Instructional Series, Levels 1-3, plus… View item
Still Image

American Squares

Charley Thomas edited the early issues of American Squares. The April 1952 issue marks the transition to Rickey Holden as editor. Later issues were edited or overseen by Rod LaFarge and Frank Kaltman… View item
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International Square and Round Dance Convention

The International Square and Round Dance Convention is a unique cooperative event. 2014 was the 54th and last year that this convention was put on by callers and dancers from the plains states and… View item
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Square Dances of the Southwest

This 1951 booklet, by caller Butch Nelson, is a useful collection of calls from that region. You can hear Nelson calling Oklahoma Cyclone here.The Related Items provide audio or video clips, called by… View item
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Ralph Page - 1980 Milestone Award

Photograph taken at the event and text of the presentation made by Jim Mayo to Ralph Page. Page was no fan of modern square dancing; indeed many of his editorials in Northern Junket argued against… 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
Document

Emergence and Development of the Cotillon

Jean-Michel Guilcher is a pre-eminent scholar of French dance. This is an excerpt from his book, La contredanse: un tournant dans l'histoire française de la danse, translated for the Square… View item
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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