This is the kind of square dancing home page that I’d like to see more of: Southeastern Mass. Square Dance Info. It’s a list of clubs and personal opinions on the clubs. What makes it interesting are the personal comments…not just a listing of who’s dancing what when to whom, but what kind of danciing, how the food is, what the usual attendance is, &etc. Too bad it hasn’t been updated since 1998. Also, be sure to check out the Open Letter to CALLERLAB, which talks about square dancing from the point of view of a “younger” (fifty-ish) couple.

Those of us who use MiniDiscs might find these April Fools pages amusing.

The SONY MZ-R100 minidisc Recorder

MZR-110PDA: This would really be a dream machine, especially if it added speed control…

Here’s an ambitious site for contra dancers: TCCD (Ithaca, NY): National Schedule Grid. I don’t know how they manage to keep it up to date, or even if they do manage… (although the info for Albuquerque looks very current).

Click on a city and a very attractive page comes up that’s filled in with info from a database. Looks like the individual dance series are responsible for keeping their database entries up-to-date.

A little more looking, and here’s the nitty gritty behind the grid: the Dance Database: DanceDB.tedcrane.com. It’s way cool…webmasters can even dynamically link to parts of the db to show up-to-date listings for dances in their areas. Here’s a list of dances in New Mexico, generated on the fly by the database:

New Mexico Contra Dances

This is what the National Square Dance Directory should be evolving into. Think about how you would try to find a dance in a city that you all of sudden have to go to on business. If you have a copy, you’d look in the National Square Dance Directory. Teeny little print and many out of date entries, but, hey, it’s there. Then you’d need to make some phone calls to find out how many of the entries are out of date and what’s really going on. If you don’t have a copy, you can start looking on the web and see if there are any websites listing clubs in the area. You’ll probably be able to find something, and with luck, it’ll even be kept up-to-date. However, suppose you’re out of luck there, so you try the square dance mailing list. Somebody immediately answers telling you that if you’d checked the NSDD, you’d have found…blah, blah, blah. So you’ve got some possibly out of date references to check. Somebody else will probably tell you exactly what you wanted to know…but it could have been easier…

Now think about going to the online square dance database. Do a search on the city and day. The records in the db will have information on when they were last updated, so you can see which ones are current and which ones need checking.

This is pretty cool: MessageClick. Ever since I switched to a network modem instead of a faxmodem, I haven’t been able to send or receive faxes. I still can’t send them, but I can receive them via email, and I even have a separate fax number.

Here’s an interesting bibliography for contra and traditional dances: Annotated Bibliography from Ted Sannella’s Swing the Next. Many of the books are still available from the Country Dance and Song Society.

If I had to use just one book for calling a party dance for non-dancers, it would be this one, which can be ordered here: CDSS: American Dance Catalog

Butenhof, Ed. Dance Parties for Beginners. Mack’s Creek, MO: The Lloyd Shaw Foundation, 1990.

A one-night stand handbook of 100 easy dances intended to supply club callers with pertinent advice and material for use with beginners. Includes many squares and novelty dances as well as a few contras and folk dances.

Wondering where to leave your square dance stuff when you die? You could leave it for spouse or spousal equivalent to deal with, or you could pass it on to one of the archives that collects dance-related materials:

The Lloyd Shaw Archives. I’m most familiar with this one because it’s in Albuquerque and I live in Albuquerque…what a coincidence. It has a lot of stuff, but also suffers from a lack of staffing and lack of accessibility.

University of New Hampshire Library – Milne Special Collections and Archives – The New Hampshire Library of Traditional Music and Dance. A big advantage of an established library is that their stuff is cataloged and the catalog is searchable on line. I know the Lloyd Shaw Archives want to be online, but they’re not there yet.

There’s also the Kentucky Dance Foundation, with Stew Shacklette, but it’s not even on line at all…or if it is, the web spiders can’t find it.

Speaking of national folk dances, here’s the page for Alabama’s official folk dance, square dancing: Official American Folk Dance of Alabama

I particularly like the photo: street clothes, with short-sleeved shirts for the men…of course, it looks like it’s from the 50’s.

Georgia (State Folk Dance) has a more realistic photo, as does Maryland (Maryland State Folk Dance – Square Dance), Connecticut (The State Folk Dance), Missouri (Missouri State American Folk Dance), South Carolina (State Folk Square Dance-www.scstatehouse.net -LPITR, Utah (Utah State Symbols (at least Utah’s shows a move that looks like it might relate to Scandinavian dancing), California (History and Culture – State Insignia) (a miniscule picture)

New Jersey shows women in long skirts: (New Jersey Legislature – State Dance)

Tennessee doesn’t have a picture (Tennessee State Folk Dance). Neither does Colorado (Colorado Emblems, Symbols, Flag and State Seal) although they do have a picture of the state fossil. Neither does Texas (LRL : Reference Desk : Stats : State Symbols), or Massachusetts (Massachusetts State Symbols), or Nebraska (Nebraska’s State Symbols)

Arkansas avoided the age issue by using a drawing of a young couple square dancing (Our State American Folk Dance). So did Washington, although their drawing shows an almost ballgown-like dress (The Symbols of Washington State)

Something from the Detroit News: Waltz or square dance your way to fitness. It actually talks about square dancing and folk dancing in the same article!

A nice social dance site, Aria’s Dance Page, with some interesting things to say about dance partnerships:

We already know about not monopolizing a partner. Dance etiquette has ruled that no more than two consecutive songs be danced with the same partner, so that everyone can find a diversity of partners to dance with. To do this is not only fair, it is smart: you will get to dance with everyone and improve the prospects of your social dancing.

Dancing with a wide set of partners is a cornerstone of social dancing. This general principle applies to everyone, including dancers who are romantically involved. A romantic pair that dances only with one another undermines the structure of soical dancing by refusing to contribute to it.

If MWSDers are so concerned about square dancing being the “National Folk Dance,” I wonder why they/we (because I do consider myself part of the MWSD world) aren’t involved in Dancing in the Millennium. This is a serious academic conference, organized by these organizations:

• Congress on Research on Dance;
• Dance Critics Association
• National Dance Association;
• Society of Dance History Scholars

with the participation of these organizations:

• American Dance Guild
• American Dance Therapy Association
• Country Dance and Song Society
• Dance and the Child International/ USA Chapter
• Dance Films Association
• Dance Heritage Coalition
• Dance Librarians Committee/American Library Association
• Dance Notation Bureau
• Dance USA
• Dance Perspectives
• International Association of Blacks in Dance
• International Association for Dance Medicine and Science
• International Tap Association
• Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies
• National Dance Education Organization
• Preserve, Inc

Now, square dancers don’t normally have much to do with these kinds of dance professionals. But I’d like to point out the participation of the Country Dance and Song Society, which is very much a recreational dance organization. I’d also like us to think about a quote from the Dancing in the Millenium site:

Dancing in the Millennium invites everyone to think about dance, its meaning, how it feels and why, and how it has evolved within the self and society. The Conference also seeks to increase communication among dance professionals of all kinds, and to make a case for increased funding for dance as an art form and as a vital educational tool.

I’d also like to point out that if we wish to lay claim to being some kind of national folk dance, we ought to be involved in a leadership role in the national recreational dance scene.

Can you find the well-known MWSD caller in this picture from Dance Flurry 2000?

It’s April 1 (April Fools’ Day!). If I were really clever, I’d have all kinds of April Fools jokes…too bad I’m not and I don’t.

I asked about people’s ideas for April Fools’ Day on the square dance callers mailing list, but got very few responses.

Here’s a site with “holiday” ideas for every day: The Big Network – Fun is Good!. You can even sign up for a daily newsletter telling you about today’s holiday…perfect if you’re looking for something to theme a dance.

Wondering about April? It’s:

• Pets Are Wonderful Month
• International Guitar Month
• Keep America Beautiful Month
• National Humor Month
• Listening Awareness Month
• Grass Month
• National Anxiety Month
• National Food Month
• Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month
• Alcohol Awareness Month

and the first week is:

• National Read a Road Map Week
• Publicity Stunt Week
• National Bake Week

Yet another health tip that talks about how using your brain is important: Gray Matters

I love this picture:

It comes from a Contradance Page…. I like it because it shows regular people in regular clothes having a great time. MWSD needs images like this.

And here’s a picture from the Dance Flurry 2000:

More regular people in regular clothes having a great time.

Well, USDA did it: they replaced their page of links with a database of links, putting the responsibility on webmasters to make sure their sites are listed. There are obvious advantages to this for USDA’s webmaster, although the webmaster has had to enter a few links to make sure some important sites are included. However, from a usability point of view, it suffers. First, of course, links just aren’t there; it’s not very effective to put a notice on the page of links that it’s going away and webmasters should enter their site in the db. Also, to enter a site in the database, one has to register yet another user name and password. Yawn. Second, I find the listing hard to read. The format means that not very many sites can be listed on a page and also makes it difficult to scan the links to see what’s there. Third, if you just ask to see all the records, they’re not in any kind of logical order.

I think a database is a good way to store links. However, they need to be displayed in a user-friendly way that makes them easy to read.

I have the same comments on the caller database. So far, there are only 10 entries in the database, so it’s not real popular (compare with Vic’s database, which has entries for 566 callers). Also compare the ease of scanning through the listing generated by Vic’s as opposed to the listing generated by the USDA’s.

For those of you following the National Folk Dance thing, here’s the USDA’s page on the subject: National Folk Dance Campaign. It outlines their campaign for next year’s Congress, including attempting to obtain a professional lobbyist (on a volunteer basis).

Here’s an interesting idea: KidsDance. Not so much the idea of DJs for kids’ parties, but the idea of individual companies in various cities banding together with a national identity and marketing plan. Check out this page: DJ’s Only.

Great domain name, but dead: LiveToDance.com. No updates since February 1999 (at least not to the calendar).

We often hear about how contra dance is growing (or at least maintaining) in popularity, while MWSD is on a downhill slide. We also often hear about how MWSD evolved into something that’s no longer sellable to the general public. I found this article, Jenny Beer on contra dance choreography, to be an interesting look at how contra dance choreography is also evolving, even, to a certain extent, in ways that are similar to how square dancing evolved: everybody active, demise of whole figures in favor of moves that contribute to flow, less emphasis on moving to the music, dances learned for the moment and then quickly forgotten…

Here’s another article on contra dancing and why dance is enjoyable: Contradictations, Chapter 1. The author, Erik Hoffman, briefly mentions MWSD:

In contra dance, the pattern repeats itself, so the caller can eventually drop out and let the music drive the dance. In square dance, it’s a bit different: the pattern is open to change and the caller keeps calling. As we become familiar with the calls, we can stop thinking and enter the no-thought state by responding to the calls. (The modern western square dance clubs have taken this concept to the extreme.)

I think in MWSD, the goal is not to enter a “no-thought” state, but rather to enter a state of flow, where the fact that we’re forced to respond quickly and almost automatically to rapid fire demands puts us into an altered state, if you will. One way to think about flow is: “a high state of attention, the conscious and unconscious processing of a massive amount of information relating to the accomplishment of a task, and the often profound state of relaxation and pleasurable alertness that occurs to further fix an individual to the task at hand and otherwise optimize cognitive efficiency.” This is from Dr. Mezmer’s World of Bad Psychology, a debunking of some of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s more ecstatic descriptions of this “optimal experience”. We’ll be talking more about flow here; when I first read Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: the psychology of optimal experience, I related to it through square dancing (and writing code, of course). I’ve had an occasional flow experience while dancing; I’ll bet most of you have too. Here’s the start of my collection of flow notes: Flow

Ever wondered what books are available about square dancing? Suite 101 has a list of books that you can order from Amazon (of course, many of us are boycotting Amazon because of their patent enforcement, but that’s another story). Books & Other Publications

If you go to Amazon and do a search on square dancing, you’ll find most of the books that are listed at Suite101, plus a lot of out of print books (Amazon will start a search for you), and a few other “interesting” references, like this one:

  
Bigfoot Doesn’t Square Dance (Adventures of the Bailey School Kids , No 25)

Visiting Ruby Mountain during a class trip, Eddie spots enormous tracks on the dirt trail and becomes convinced that the prints belong to the square-dancing teacher, a large, hairy man who resembles Bigfoot.

and this one:

Noah’s Square Dance

It’s square dance night on Noah’s ark “As fiddlers rosin up their bows / And dancers start to tap their toes. . . .” The rhythm promenades through the book, setting an upbeat tone and a lively pace for reading aloud. Noah calls the dance moves, and the friendly-looking animals and people try to follow his instructions, though things get a little wild with “Pick up your honey with a left arm ’round / And swing that hippo off the ground.” Soon the storm ends, partners hug, and on the last page the animals disembark.

Used to be a lawyer. This is pretty funny, if you like silly dancing pages: LawyerDance.com Well, I like it better than ArmadilloDance.com.

It finally happened: I was websurfing and watching TV when one of those commercials that advertise music collections came on. This one was a polka collection, which shows lots of twenty- and thirty-somethings polka-ing around the floor to incredibly hokey polka music. Maybe we need a square dance music collection, where we can show twenty- and thirty-somethings square dancing. So I quickly typed the URL in, and now I’m in the land of TV music. Yes, indeed, all those collections from late night on the Weather Channel (between the Psychic Network ads) are here at TVMusic4U.com.

Here’s a program to help with learning A1, A2, and C1 (too bad they don’t have C3A…that’s what I need right now). Electric Square Dance

Gotta check out Gotta Dance.

I like this idea…too bad it hasn’t been kept up since July 1997: Sites of the Month

Make up your own bullshit: (not MWSD related) dack.com > web > web economy bullshit generator

Square Dancing in the The Christian Science Monitor Electronic Edition. I did a search on square dancing, and came up with 26 hits. That’s as far as I got, since I was unwilling to pay $1.50 for the full text of each article. However, here’s the teasers for a few:

Berlin Square Dancers Do-Si-Do to ‘YMCA’ 1998-05-14
Mary Beth Warner BERLIN President Clinton leaves Germany today after a two-day visit that marked the 50th anniversary of the Berlin airlift, when Western Allies kept the city supplied through the 1948-1949 Soviet ground blockade. But the celebrations don’t include one aspect of American culture that’s taken firm hold here in the wake of the US presence: square dancing. The normal quiet of a Sunday spring evening in the German capital was broken recently by all the whooping and hollering down at… (647 words)

Social Dancing Sweeps America 1997-04-16
Kirsten A. Conover, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BOSTON – Dancing has burst onto the stage of favorite American pastimes with the energy and enthusiasm of rediscovered pleasures. Ballroom students are thronging to big-band weekends from Wisconsin to Oregon; line, round, and square dancing draw more than 700 to a festival in school gyms in Hartford, Conn., and account for 60 clubs in the metro Atlanta area; Irish step-dance classes are burgeoning in Buffalo, N.Y., Tampa, Fla., and… (590 words)

Let’s Dance 1997-04-16
Elizabeth Levitan Spaid, Eric C. Evarts, Ann Scott Tyson, Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor, and Gloria Goodale, M. S. Mason, Special to the Christian Science Monitor Ballroom Dancing Atlanta – Fred and Ginger would be proud – and maybe a little surprised – at the boom in ballroom dancing. Ballroom was eclipsed by the twist in the ’60s, disco in the ’70s, and other dance fads in the ’80s. Now it’s back in full swing. “The reason is romance,” says Joe LoCurto, owner of LoCurto’s Dance… (1757 words)

Not So Square Square-Dancing 1993-11-23
Eric C. Evarts, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BOSTON – SQUARE dancing will try to shed its hillbilly image. That is, if the Duo has anything to do with it. Paul C and Ted Lizotte like to think of themselves as the callers who put youth and vigor back into a historic American tradition that has an image so far out of the mainstream it is considered quaint. Indeed, when Mr. C and Mr. Lizotte hold their annual introductory fun nights, Lizotte says, “I can’t believe the numb… (910 words)

Here’s an intriguing headline from the Baltimore Jewish Times (2/5/1999): Horah? They’d Rather Do-si-do: Square dancing is a happening at Old…” (please pay $1.50 for the rest…)

Square dancing may be the official dance of Maryland, but do you know what the official sport is? Jousting! Square dancing and jousting…now there’s a combination.