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

Browse Items (9 total)

  • Temporal Coverage is exactly "18th century - middle"
Document

Emergence and Development of the Cotillon

Jean-Michel Guilcher is a pre-eminent scholar of French dance. This is an excerpt from his book, La contredanse: un tournant dans l'histoire française de la danse, translated for the Square… View item
Document

History of Square Dancing - Ralph Page

Between 1972 and 1974, Ralph Page wrote a series of essays entitled A History of Square Dancing. For ease in downloading, we have collected them into "chapters" that group together similar topics.… View item
Document

The History of Square-Dancing - S. Foster Damon

The History of Square Dancing, published by S. Foster Damon in 1957, is one of the few books that presents a broad picture of the subject. The book was a reprint of his 1952 article published in the… View item
Document

The Birth of the Cotillion and the Quadrille, French Contredanses

This is a translation of Simonne Voyer's article, "La naissance du cotillon et du quadrille, contredanses françaises."The translation is by Susan Kevra, Senior Lecturer in French and American… View item
Document

La naissance du cotillon et du quadrille, contredanses françaises

Article (in French) by Simonne Voyer, who is the author of La danse traditionnelle dans l'est du Canada: quadrilles et cotillons. For a translation in English by Susan Kevra, click here. View item
Document

Cotillon / Cotillion / Contredanse Française

referring to a dance in our collection:The dance is a contredanse from de la Cuisse, published in 1762. It was not called a cotillion in France. Once de la Cuisse had published his collection, the… View item
Moving Image

La Nouvelle Carel, French cotillion 1762

Cotillion, La Nouvelle Carel, Le Repertoires de Bals, de la Cuisse, Paris, 1762Here is another dance from the same collection, performed by a different group. View item
Moving Image

Nouvelle Anglaise, contredanse française

This dance is Nouvelle Anglaise, acontredanse française published in Repertoire de Bals, de la Cuisse, Paris, 1762. The music is Sur L'Air du Tambourin de Daquin.The 18th centurycotillonandcontredanse… View item
Moving Image

Lancers Quadrille (instruction)

2022 update: If the video doesn't play here, you'll have to click on the YouTube icon in the lower right-hand corner of the image, or else click on this link.This instructional video was produced by… View item