HISTORY OF SQUARE DANCE
Introduction
Square Dancing had been around for centuries. It began in England and France and came to America early in the history of the new world. As the population spread westward so also did square dancing taking different forms as it went. The uniquely American contribution to this development was the caller, sometimes called the prompter because he prompted the dancers memory of patterns they had learned. Modern square dancing began with the advent of public address equipment good enough to allow changing dance patterns and the use of recorded music. In the next 20 years hundreds of new calls were created. By the mid-1970s the organization Callerlab was able to bring order to the new-call confusion by establishing standard dancing programs - Basic, Mainstream, Plus, etc... Callerlab also provided standard call definitions, timing and styling.
Roots of Square Dance
Square dance as we know it today is one of the few dance forms that is identified as truly American in origin. However, American Square Dancing has two great ancestors, one English and one French.
Morris Dance. (1600’s)The Morris Dance was a professional dance performed by trained teams who called themselves "Morris Men", and it was done with great gravity. Morris Dances were danced by six men (remember, the women didn't count!) in two rows of three. Try to imagine yourself dancing in a shortened set (lacking one couple) and visualize all the square dance figures that you could do such as “forward six and fall back six”, “circle”, "weave the ring" or "form a star".
English Country Dance. The Country Dance is the dance of the common folks. If you could be dropped into the village green of a town in 16th century England on a long, long summer evening, you may hear a single pipe playing the most enchanting and singable tune. By the time this long evening is over you shall have done an astonishing variety of dance patterns. The dancing included "longways"-dances - some for six, some for eight and some for "as many as will". The ones for eight are square dances - stretched out as lengthwise as on the day they were born. And the ones for "as many as will" have all the figures and subdivisions of our modern contra.
French Contredanse. (late 1700’s) This dance form is a cousin of the English Country Dance performed for two and four couples in a square formation.
Lancers. (early 1800’s) A Lancer is an elegant and elaborate form of the quadrille involving a five-part arrangement performed in a four-sided formation. Each part is performed to a different rhythm. The last figure was always military in style and in march-time similar to the contemporary Grand Square. Lancers were danced to a full orchestra and were more popular in colonial America than was the Quadrille.
New England Singing Quadrille. This colonial dance form replaced the more elaborate five-part quadrille and was described as simple, freely moving and melodious singing squares. The tunes, the dances and the rhyming caller became very popular. The French-Canadians embellished the quadrille with the long count swing and buzz step. This dance form provided many of the basics for the 20th century square dance.
Appalachian Mountain Running Set. The colonial Running Set was similar to the English Country Dance and dances from the lowlands of Scotland. The running set is more truly a round eight than a square eight. The action goes "around" the square rather than "across" it. The single visiting couple figure was a common element of the running set and later the western style of colonial square dance. The caller, a truly American innovation, could call within or outside of the set. The dancers used a bouncing run or clogging action. This dance form was discovered in 1917 by Cecil J. Sharp.
Play Party Games. The Play Party Games (dances without fiddle music) were an offspring of the Running Set. These allowed dancing to continue and thus endure times of fanatical religious disapproval. The Puritan under the influence of General Cromwell and John Knox were a grim lot, believing, as they evidently did, that what was gay and light-hearted was also sinful. When they came across the sea during the first half of the 17th century, they simply left the whole lot behind.
Texas Square Dance. (post Civil War) Texas square dance is characterized by colorful patter (rhyming) and intricate dance figures. These calls were created by the uninhibited imaginative callers. The calls were a product of oral rather than written tradition as the fiddler brought them along as he moved among different ranches to perform. Women and fiddler’s were very scarce in the west so the arrival of a fiddler would prompt an evening of dance. Visiting couple, do-si-do, and allamende were popular traditions.
People in Square Dance
John Playford. One of the earliest written records (and there are not many) of English Country Dances is contained in the works of John Playford, a musician and dance master. His book The English Dancing Master - Plain and Easy Rules for The Dancing of Country Dances, with Tunes of Each Dance was published in seventeen editions between 1650 and 1728 and contained 918 dances.
Cecil J. Sharp. In 1917, the great English folklorist, Cecil J. Sharp, was prowling the southern Appalachians, hunting for folks songs and ballads. Descendants of the early settlers who had come to the new world during the reign of James I and later, had drifted into the back country, established little settlements, and remained so out of contact with the world over many generations that their customs, their speech, their songs and their crafts had been preserved unchanged, as a fly is caught and held intact in amber. He documented the relationship between the Running Set and English Country Dance.