Ladies to the Center
This short article by Texas dance historian Olcutt Sanders looks at the role played by women in that state's dance history. Sanders notes the early absence of women:
"A scarcity of woman and a general sparseness of settlement in the Texas cattle country until late in the Nineteenth Century (the frontier broke about 1886) made any kind of gathering rare and a gathering of the two sexes was as rare as a fiddler beyond the Pearly gates and as important as a boy's first pair of boots."
He describes the vital role that women played as organizers of social events, their highly-sought-after presence on the dance floor (where men outnumbered them by three to one), the respect paid to them (due in part to cowboy awkwardness). He also discusses Annie Hightower, one of the few women musicians.
Subjects: General - Dance and Culture, Traditional Western (pre-1940)
Tags: Olcutt Sanders, Texas, women
Item Relations
| This Item | is related to | Item: Early Texas Dances |
| This Item | is related to | Item: Early Dance Houses |
| This Item | is related to | Item: "The Good Ole Days" - Olcutt Sanders, 1949 |
| This Item | is related to | Item: "The Texas Cattle Country and Cowboy Square Dance" – Olcutt Sanders |
| Item: "Partners To Your Places | is related to | This Item |
Citation
Dublin Core
Title
Description
"A scarcity of woman and a general sparseness of settlement in the Texas cattle country until late in the Nineteenth Century (the frontier broke about 1886) made any kind of gathering rare and a gathering of the two sexes was as rare as a fiddler beyond the Pearly gates and as important as a boy's first pair of boots."
He describes the vital role that women played as organizers of social events, their highly-sought-after presence on the dance floor (where men outnumbered them by three to one), the respect paid to them (due in part to cowboy awkwardness). He also discusses Annie Hightower, one of the few women musicians.