If you’re looking for a source for some MIDI square dance music, check out Peanutjake’s site. The tunes sound artificial, but since they’re in MIDI format, you could change the instrumentation or use more realistic sounding instruments. There are also figures for some of the tunes (Peanutjake is interested in traditional square dance) in JPG format; I think he scanned them in from books, but I don’t recognize the source.

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I’ve an idea for a fund-raising event featuring different kinds of dance: let people try all kinds of recreational dance forms to see what they like. I found Dance for Health, a site promoting dance events to raise money to promote dance to improve health. I couldn’t find a date on it; I guess if one is interested, one will have to email them. They do mention square dancing as one of the dance forms.

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If you haven’t seen this video, Cool Moves, you should. It’s designed to promote square dancing to pre-teens, and focuses on the 1998 Pacific Northwest Teen Square Dance Festival. Modern production values and a pretty good script make this an important asset in any effort to get middle school kids interested in dancing.

More good ideas from the Canadian Square and Round Dance Society: From the PR, Marketing, Public Relations page:

A Graphic master repository will be established and accessed through the CSRDS web site. This would provide one location for storing and accessing square dance graphic materials – avoiding duplication of efforts and providing for easiest sharing across the activity. The older images commonly seen on dance posters will begin the collection. New updated graphics are urgently needed! Our dance movement has evolved and our collection of graphics needs to modernize.

I really agree on needing to update our graphics and on making them available to clubs.

Here’s another compendium of recruiting info from Canada: Promoting Square/Round Dancing

Want to see some pictures with young people dancing (again from Canada)? Try here: Teen Festival 99 Gallery.

How about a teen view of What Makes a Good Caller?