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

Browse Items (28 total)

  • Tags: Rickey Holden
Document

Square Dance Week - Austin, 1949

The photo shows Marlys Swenson giving a square dance lesson to Austin's "Mayor Tom," who has proclaimed the week of March 20-26, 1949, as "Square-Dance Week." The Additional File is the accompanying… View item
Website

Texas squares

Caller Rickey Holden is well represented on this site by clicking this link. A playlist of many Holden videos posted by SDHP on YouTube can be accessed here. It includes these dances from his… View item
Still Image

Rickey Holden - photographs

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Still Image

Al Brundage, Shaw, Rickey Holden, Ed Gilmore

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Sound

Spinning Wheel - description and audio

This figure appears here in two formats. The written description comes from Betty Casey in Foot 'n' Fiddle managzine; Casey published several collections of square dance figures and decades later… View item
Document

A Brief History of "Hash"

This is a chapter from Instant Hash that appeared in American Squares magazine. Litman and Holden define hash as "a mixture of figures which come one after another so quickly that often there is no… View item
Document

The Square Dance Caller

This is one of the most successful efforts to describe in detail just what is involved in being a good square dance caller. (Tony Parkes, in his Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century,"… View item
Document

Song of the HIGH-LEVEL Dancer - poem

The push for "high level dancing" appeared in the 1950s as square dancing took off. Some dancers wanted ever-more-challenging programs and they were often reluctant to dance with less-skilled dancers.… View item
Document

Syllabus of Square Dances, Rickey Holden 1949

This is a syllabus created by Rickey Holden for a callers' workshop held in San Antonio in 1949. The course was 2-1/2 hours each night for five days. It's a useful primary source document showing the… View item
Moving Image

Suzy Q - Grand Cuttyshaw - Rickey Holden

Holden's name for this dance was the Grand Cuttyshaw, which he published as "traditional New Mexico" in his 1992 booklet, "Square Dances of West Texas." A note there reads, "This traditional figure,… View item
Moving Image

Texas Whirlwind - Rickey Holden

Holden teaches the figures, starting with a review of Catch All Eight, a traditional figure from West Texas that became part of modern square dance: right hand turn halfway around, then left hand turn… View item
Sound

Alamo Style

This 1949 description of "Alamo style" balances comes from Rickey Holden, who coined the term to describe the figure. Holden points out that the action itself had been around for a while.… View item