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

Browse Items (1930 total)

Document

Texas Square Dance Contests

These are a series of newspaper clippings made by J. Olcutt Sanders, documenting Texas square dance competitions. (Unfortunately, most of them are undated.) We assume that these are from Fort Worth;… View item
Document

Bob Sumrall - Olcutt Sanders correspondence, 1939

These letters between Bob Sumrall and J. Olcutt Sanders provide a glimpse into Texas square dances in the late 1930s. Sanders was a serious student of square dance history, part of a group of… View item
Moving Image

The Route - Rickey Holden

Rickey Holden calling a classic square dance figure, alternately called The Rout or The Route. Rather than a full walkthrough, he gives only a general introduction, setting up the dancers for some… View item
Moving Image

Three Ladies Chain - Rickey Holden

Instead of the women chaining over and back within their own square, in this variation of Three Ladies Chain, caller Rickey Holden has the women leaving their square and chaining all the way over the… View item
Document

Old Square Dances of America

In his Square Dances of West Texas booklet and elsewhere, Rickey Holden makes frequent references to Iowa as a source of western dancing: --- There are, not counting the Southern Mountain clogging of… View item
Moving Image

Cotillon

French dancing masters in the early 18th century created a dance for two couples called the cotillon. This morphed into the cotillion and later became the quadrille. The opening minutes of this… View item
Document

1954 National Square Dance Convention - callers

This listing comes from the program book of the 3rd National Square Dance Convention (Dallas, TX, April 8-10, 1954). View item
Document

It's Fun To Square Dance

This booklet is profusely illustrated with photographs and diagrams, making the dance figures easy to understand. Lunsford was the founder in 1928 of the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville,… View item
Document

East Tennessee Square Dance Calls

This 1938 collection of more than 50 dances was written in Oklahoma, where the author explains that he has received "many requests for some East Tennessee square dance calls, or figures." He adds that… View item
Document

Square Dancing in the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky

NOTE: To read the actual booklet, choose the links above. Numbers 1 & 3 are large files and, depending on your internet speed, might take a while to load. This 1971 collection begins with a… View item
Website

Kentucky Square Dances

An early (1928) collection of figures collected "from callers in Kentucky who are familiar with the old square dances as they are danced in the Kentucky Mountains and elsewhere in the state."This is… View item
Moving Image

Les Lanciers de Quebec - Quebec Lancers

This video illustrates the first two figures of a Quebecois version of the Lancers Quadrille, danced at the Ralph Page Dance Legacy Weekend in January, 2009. The tune and the name for the first figure… View item