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

Browse Items (1941 total)

Website

Viola "Mom" Ruth - Peek a Boo Waltz Quadrille

"Now you waltz down the center and there you divide Lady to the right, gent the other side Honor your partner and then make a trade Swing on the corner to a waltz promenade" Digitized from a live… View item
Document

Arkansas Traveller variations

After several opening paragraphs in which the author decries the tendency toward ever more complex figures, he does admit that experienced dancers enjoy "a little variation." He takes one… View item
Document

Midwest Dancer

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Sound

Duck for Oysters (clip) - Burns & Wheeler

"Duck for the Oyster, Dig for the Clams" is surely one of the most common traditional square dance figures. There are many examples of this dance on the SDHP website. Here it's "Duck for Oysters,… View item
Website

Duke Miller website

Duke Miller was a square dance caller (and a wrestling coach) in Gloversville, NY, and later became a popular caller for summertime dances in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire. His… 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
Moving Image

Just Because - Walter Lenk

Caller Walter Lenk, backed up by Tony Parkes, leads dancers through the singing square Just Because. Recorded at the Saturday night Grand Dance, January 1988, at the first Ralph Page Dance Legacy… View item
Website

Notes on Singing Squares - Walter Lenk

A collection of favorite singing square calls, with some musical examples, created by Walter Lenk. His site also includes a valuable transcription of singing calls in the repertoire of Chip… View item
Website

Glenn F. Pease - Old-Time Barn Dance Caller

Glenn F. Pease: Old-Time Barn Dance Caller From just after WW II to the early 1970s, one of the places to be on a summer Saturday night in a small corner of west-central New Hampshire was at a… View item
Moving Image

Cotillon - Dezais

This performance shows one of fourcotillons described by Jaques Dezais in his 1725Premier livre de contre-dances. View item
Document

Hillbillies Win in New York (Billboard, 1944)

To read a copy of the full story, see Additional Files below.This 1944 news story, written in the usual flashy style ofBillboard magazine, documents a surge of interest in "hillbilly music" in New… View item
Document

Calls 'N' Cues (DC)

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