Today's square and round dancing is a continuation of the social dance history of western civilization.
Group dances are dances in which one or a few couples separate from the group, dance for the group, and then rejoin the group. Both types are in the Italian dance manuals of the 15th and 16th centuries and appear to have been in all parts of Europe. In the 17th century, groups were abundant under the name "English country dance."
In the 1920s, Henry Ford of Model-T fame worried that the flamboyant popular dancing of the day might ruin forever the more elegant and genteel style of dancing his grandparents had done. He decided to revive the "old" style, including building a beautiful ballroom (now part of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan), hiring Benjamin Lovett, a dancing master from Sudbury, Massachusetts, to run classes and dances, and publishing Good Morning, in which the late 19th century squares and rounds were revived "after a sleep of twenty-five years."
Ford's revival influenced Lloyd Shaw, a high school educator in Colorado, who decided to include dances of the American West in the physical education curriculum. The old-timers he worked with had been young people in the 19th century and told him about local variations on the usual 19th century dances. Shaw augmented this information with 19th century dance manuals and, as he explains in Cowboy Dances and The Round Dance Book, liberally edited the results according to his own needs and those of his high school dancers, who, as one might guess, were an energetic group.
At first, these "western" squares and the rounds tended to have short sequences with predictable repeats, rather energetic tempos, and a lively style of movement. Dancers learned by doing and usually did not need many lessons. As more people became interested, more ideas began to flow, resulting in more square dance calls and round dance steps. This, in turn, created the need for more technical understanding on the part of callers and cuers, more training for dancers, and more written materials such as round dance cue sheets and caller's note services. The information explosion of the 20th century hit the dance world. Over time, it contributed to a slowdown of the tempo and energy level of the dancing which in turn coincided with an aging dance population.
Today's modern western square and round dancing are so richly developed that there is more material than most dancers can or want to learn. Subgroups have formed in which dancers use certain portions of the material. An emerging question is whether these subgroups will be part of the whole, new branches on the family tree, or deadwood that withers and falls off.
Western squares and rounds are only a part of today's total, for social dance is also fragmented according to age group and subculture. We have—and take for granted—much wider sampling of movement and musical styles from many different cultures than ever before. (Perhaps, as the globe seems to shrink, we will have to look to outer space to find those things which seem truly "outlandish.") It is hard to imagine today's culture without the dancing derived from the jazz tradition, i.e. Broadway's show dancing, tap dancing, jitterbug-lindy-swing, and the solo dancing associated with rock, hip-hop, and related forms. We also have our square and round dancing and the dancing usually indicated today as "ballroom dancing," as well as the "traditional" squares and contras which survived through the ragtime and jazz eras. They too have changed along the way, for change is usually equivalent to survival.
Squares and rounds (in all their forms) continue the dance tradition of western civilization as well as or better than anything else in this wide and beautiful array. We need to understand and appreciate this heritage without negating other forms or being vaguely sentimental or emotional. We need to understand that change is normal and that we are not dancing exactly as we did 50, 100, or 200 years ago. We are one of a number of forms of recreational dance and a vital part of the dance world. We have a proven vehicle for fun, fellowship, and community-building to enjoy, share, and continue.
However, as for the nature of squares and round dancing to come—or any other dancing—only the dance historian of the future can tell us where we will go from here.
Happy Dancing! - Veronica Ann McClure
This entire article was published in the Dixie Round Dance Council Newsletter, January 2009