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

Browse Items (63 total)

  • Temporal Coverage is exactly "1930s"
Still Image

Soco Gap Dancers

Photograph of the Soco Gap Dancers, North Carolina View item
Still Image

Herb Greggerson - Herb's Blue Bonnet Calls

Greggerson's book, originally published in 1937, contains more than 50 dances, supplemented with photographs and diagrams. The full text is available at the Internet Archive.After a brief foreward… View item
Website

Frank Fortune and the Bradford (NH) Barn Dance

Back in the 1930s and 1940s in many of the villages of New England were held dances referred to as "Barn Dances" or "Round and Square Dances" or "Eastern Barn Dance Style Square Dances". As people did… View item
Document

"Dancing to the Music: Domestic Square Dances and Community in Southcentral Kentucky (1880-1940)"

This detailed examination of the role of square dances in south central Kentucky is written by a folklorist, who based his findings on interviews with 20 musicians, dancers, and callers in that… View item
Website

Lonesome Luke & His Farm Hands – Wild Hog in the Woods

Recorded Thursday, February 12, 1931 Richmond IN (Champion 16229)Luke Decker - FiddleIra Decker - BanjoC.W. Johnson - GuitarLee Day - Guitar/CallsPhil Jamison: "Wild Hog in the Woods is one of four… View item
Sound

Beaver Valley Breakdown - Lonesome Luke

More information about this band is available here. View item
Still Image

Audience Cheers Cheyenne Dancers (newspaper)

This newspaper account describes the enthusiastic reception given the Cheyenne Mountain Dancers when they performed at Swarthmore College (PA). This was the second stop on the dancers' inaugural trip… View item
Document

The Buzzards' Glory Barn Dance 1928–1966

In the early 1970s, Bob Dalsemer heard about a dance series in Albanstown, northern Baltimore County, Maryland; the dances were no longer being held so he interviewed two sources to create this… View item
Document

Old Time Square Dancing on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina

Author Bob Dalsemer discovers a long tradition of the "big circle" square dance on this island off the North Carolina coast, far from the Appalachian Mountains where it is usually… View item
Document

Mica Flats, Idaho - traditional dance

This article describes traditional dances in Mica Flats, Idaho, eight miles south of Coeur d'Alene. It was written by Penn Fix as a chapter in his book, Contra Dancing in the Northwest. View item
Document

Douglas Kennedy on American dances, 1939

Douglas Kennedy succeeded Cecil Sharp as director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. He visited the United States in 1939 to teach dancing and to observe what he could while in this country.… View item
Still Image

Square Dance, McIntosh County, Oklahoma – 1939/40

A series of color slides taken by Russell Lee at an Oklahoma dance in 1939 or 1940. More information about the first one can be found here. A larger sample of the photographs is available here at the… View item