Swing that Pretty Gal! - 1941 article
In the wake of the first trips by the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers, this 1941 article in The Saturday Evening Post describes the widespread passion for squares that is growing, and gives Lloyd Shaw credit for the revival:
Quoted material follows:
Somewhere in your community there's a square dance tonight. At your country club, in a hotel ballroom, at the town hall, the rural school or the farmhouse barn, groups ranging up to hundreds are dancing, shouting and laughing as the caller cries:
"Turn right back on the same old track
And swing that gal behind you!"
Mildly popular when limited to staid and inflexible New England quadrilles, square dancing suddenly has captured the public fancy under the impact of the free-and-easy, informal and hilarious cowboy dances. From coast to coast it is epidemic. The younger set is discovering the sweep and freedom of a diversion supposed, until recently, to be suited only to their parents. Manufacturers face a bottleneck in supplying the booming demand for square-dance costumes. Fiddlers prosper.
Customs and costumes of a generation were influenced by the dance forms originated by Vernon and Irene Castle. Square dances, especially the cowboy pattern, promise as lasting an influence.
Credit for popularizing the cowboy square belongs largely to a Colorado schoolmaster. Through his student dancers from the Cheyenne Mountain suburban public school at Colorado Springs, Dr. Lloyd Shaw, an educator with the instincts of a showman and the zeal of a missionary, has spread the square-dance gospel from Broadway to Sunset Boulevard. He loves square dancing for Its color and lustiness, but his crusading spirit is born of the conviction that it fosters the spread of democratic processes.
Tags: article, Cheyenne Mountain Dancers, Colorado, Lloyd Shaw, magazine, Saturday Evening Post
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In the wake of the first trips by the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers, this 1941 article in The Saturday Evening Post describes the widespread passion for squares that is growing, and gives Lloyd Shaw credit for the revival:
Quoted material follows:
Somewhere in your community there's a square dance tonight. At your country club, in a hotel ballroom, at the town hall, the rural school or the farmhouse barn, groups ranging up to hundreds are dancing, shouting and laughing as the caller cries:
"Turn right back on the same old track
And swing that gal behind you!"
Mildly popular when limited to staid and inflexible New England quadrilles, square dancing suddenly has captured the public fancy under the impact of the free-and-easy, informal and hilarious cowboy dances. From coast to coast it is epidemic. The younger set is discovering the sweep and freedom of a diversion supposed, until recently, to be suited only to their parents. Manufacturers face a bottleneck in supplying the booming demand for square-dance costumes. Fiddlers prosper.
Customs and costumes of a generation were influenced by the dance forms originated by Vernon and Irene Castle. Square dances, especially the cowboy pattern, promise as lasting an influence.
Credit for popularizing the cowboy square belongs largely to a Colorado schoolmaster. Through his student dancers from the Cheyenne Mountain suburban public school at Colorado Springs, Dr. Lloyd Shaw, an educator with the instincts of a showman and the zeal of a missionary, has spread the square-dance gospel from Broadway to Sunset Boulevard. He loves square dancing for Its color and lustiness, but his crusading spirit is born of the conviction that it fosters the spread of democratic processes.