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

Browse Items (1925 total)

Still Image

West Newbury, VT - square dance competition

This is a newspaper account (and acccompanying poem) describing the 1941 success of a team from West Newbury, Vermont, in a dance competition. We often think of square dance contests in Texas, but… View item
Website

Grand Chain - Grande Chaîne

Note: The link will take you to the home page featuring a documentary by Guy Bouchard about "Traditional music and dances from the tip of the Gaspé peninsula." Interested viewers can stream the… View item
Website

Musical and Mathematical Design of Square Dance Singing Calls

These videos record a lengthy and detailed talk by caller Guy Steele. He's not addressing a square dance audience, so it's an interesting presentation of technical aspects of how a singing… View item
Moving Image

Quebec - Baie Saint-Paul, #1

Footage from Baie Saint-Paul, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, taken at the "Centre hospitalier de Charlevoix" on January 5, 1974, by Guy Landry. Dance historian Pierre Chartrand describes this as… View item
Moving Image

Baie Saint-Paul, #2

Footage from Baie Saint-Paul, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, taken at the "Centre hospitalier de Charlevoix" on January 5, 1974, by Guy Landry. Dance historian Pierre Chartrand… View item
Still Image

Square Dance attendance & new calls

This slide contains two graphs, part of a presentation by Guy Steele on "The Mathematics of Square Dance Singing Calls," complete with dancers from MIT's Tech Squares group demonstrating figures. You… View item
Document

Swamp Country Dance

This is a first-person account of attending a country dance in Georgia in the mid-1950s. The author describes the big circle formation in detail: "A single dance would go like this; The… View item
Sound

Tunnel Through - Handley's Oldtimers

A photograph of the band from the late 1940s is available here.This is an excerpt from the full audio file, available here.Piano - Melody Handley Accordion - Roger Handley Banjo - Lloyd Handley Bass… View item
Sound

Darling Nellie Gray - Happy Hale

Happy Hale was a caller from Bernardston, MA, and some have speculated that Ralph Page patterned his style as a singing caller on Hale's technique. Other Happy Hale recordings at the Library of… View item
Sound

Yellow Rose of Texas - Dad Brundage

Dad Brundage was the father of Al and Bob Brundage, each of whom became well-known modern square dance callers. In his autobiography, This Is My Square Dancing Life, Bob Brundage writes, "Then when I… View item
Sound

Forward Six and Back (clip) - Harold Luce

This audio clip features the fiddling and calling of Harold "Chuck" Luce, who started playing in the mid-1930s and was still playing in 2012. He has been associated with the Ed Larkin… View item
Sound

First Two Gents Cross Over - Harold Luce

Harold Luce started fiddling with the Ed Larkin Dancers in north central Vermont in the 1930s and played with them until his death at age 95 on August 13, 2014. In this recording, he is accompanied on… View item