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

Browse Items (1930 total)

Moving Image

Ozarks - Cooper's Barn Square #4

Cabool, Missouri: Ozark square dance footage recorded by Gordon McCann and shared with the Square Dance History Project. The fiddler is Bob Holt, recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship in 1999.… View item
Document

Cowboy Songs and Dances

This is an excerpt-- the dance part; a later song section is omitted-- from an article that includes the author's experiences at a cowboy dance in 1903. The author includes typical patter heard… View item
Sound

Cindy - Graham Rigby

Graham Rigby, author of "My Life's a Dance," was an Australian caller. Here he does a traditional American square dance figure. View item
Still Image

West Newbury, VT - square dance competition

This is a newspaper account (and acccompanying poem) describing the 1941 success of a team from West Newbury, Vermont, in a dance competition. We often think of square dance contests in Texas, but… View item
Website

Grand Chain - Grande Chaîne

Note: The link will take you to the home page featuring a documentary by Guy Bouchard about "Traditional music and dances from the tip of the Gaspé peninsula." Interested viewers can stream the… View item
Website

Musical and Mathematical Design of Square Dance Singing Calls

These videos record a lengthy and detailed talk by caller Guy Steele. He's not addressing a square dance audience, so it's an interesting presentation of technical aspects of how a singing… View item
Moving Image

Quebec - Baie Saint-Paul, #1

Footage from Baie Saint-Paul, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, taken at the "Centre hospitalier de Charlevoix" on January 5, 1974, by Guy Landry. Dance historian Pierre Chartrand describes this as… View item
Moving Image

Baie Saint-Paul, #2

Footage from Baie Saint-Paul, in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, taken at the "Centre hospitalier de Charlevoix" on January 5, 1974, by Guy Landry. Dance historian Pierre Chartrand… View item
Still Image

Square Dance attendance & new calls

This slide contains two graphs, part of a presentation by Guy Steele on "The Mathematics of Square Dance Singing Calls," complete with dancers from MIT's Tech Squares group demonstrating figures. You… View item
Document

Swamp Country Dance

This is a first-person account of attending a country dance in Georgia in the mid-1950s. The author describes the big circle formation in detail: "A single dance would go like this; The… View item
Sound

Tunnel Through - Handley's Oldtimers

A photograph of the band from the late 1940s is available here.This is an excerpt from the full audio file, available here.Piano - Melody Handley Accordion - Roger Handley Banjo - Lloyd Handley Bass… View item
Sound

Darling Nellie Gray - Happy Hale

Happy Hale was a caller from Bernardston, MA, and some have speculated that Ralph Page patterned his style as a singing caller on Hale's technique. Other Happy Hale recordings at the Library of… View item