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

Browse Items (1938 total)

Still Image

Servel Square Dance Club

The Servel Square Dance Club of Evansville, Indiana was formed by employees of the Servel plant, which made refrigerators before and after World War II. In this photo are square dancers, caller… View item
Document

Square Dance Institute - Rickey Holden, 1950

Syllabus of a workshop led by Holden in Massachusetts in 1950, introducing Texas style square dancing to New England dancers. In addition to notes on figures and styling, this handout included… View item
Document

Square Dance Lessons - Doc Alumbaugh

A series of photographs with text illustrating basic square dance figures. This set, incomplete at the moment, appeared in a Rochester, New York, newspaper in 1950; Alumbaugh led a series of… View item
Document

Dancing with Style - Lloyd Shaw

Lloyd Shaw's Cheyenne Mountain Dancers took the country by storm on their many cross-country trips; their stylish dancing, and Shaw's ideas on the subject, influenced subsequent generations of… View item
Document

Bar Nothin' Squares - record ad

This ad for Bar Nothin' Squares, the live album recorded with Bud Udick calling, proclaims proudly, "DON'T USE MONOTONOUS RECORDS WHERE ALL THE COUPLES DO THE SAME THING."… View item
Moving Image

The Great American Folk Dance

The caller featured in many sequences is Bob Van Antwerp. This film was produced by KBYU, Provo, Utah, produced in cooperation with the Associated Square Dance Clubs of Utah. The original film had… View item
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Bow to your Partner: 23rd National Square Dance Convention

Film of the 23rd National Square Dance Convention, held in San Antonio, TX, in 1974. Related Items link to footage of other National Conventions in 1959, 1961, 1970, and 1976.01:30 square dancers and… View item
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The Lloyd Shaw Foundation in Action

This 1972 film describes the many activities of the Lloyd Shaw Foundation at that time. The movie was written and narrated by Don Armstrong, and produced and edited by Truett Myers. In addition to… View item
Document

Smoky Mountain Square Dances

NOTE: This is a large file and might take a while to load.To read the actual booklet, choose the DOWNLOAD link or select the source file located by scrolling to Additional Files.This collection,… View item
Document

Traditional Square Dance of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

Detailed description of big set dances on Ocracoke Island, and an attempt in 1996 to re-create a dance tradition that had died out. Note: when you scroll through the PDF, you’ll see the cover page,… View item
Moving Image

Malcolm McLaren, Buffalo Gals

Hip hop video riffing on square dancing, released in 1982 Another video shows the same material presented in a concert setting.McLaren was an English musician, performer, manager of the Sex Pistols,… View item