This is an interesting article on square dancing and why it’s enjoyable. Unfortunately, it contains an erroneous statement about square dancing’s status as the national folk dance. Square dancing was declared the national folk dance for a finite period of time, 1982-1983, in Public Law 97-118, 96 Stat. 104, June 1, 1982. But there are only five national symbols: the flag, the Great Seal, the national anthem, the bald eagle, and the American rose. In a multi-cultural society, why should a dance form based on Anglo-European traditions be declared a national symbol?

I like square dancing. A lot. I also like contra dancing, swing dancing, two-stepping, international folk dancing, disco dancing, salsa. I wouldn’t support any of them as a “national dance”.

---

I’ve been thinking about how to publicize square dancing. One idea I had was to take the club’s badge maker and make badges with various slogans that might pique people’s curiosity. You know how you see people wearing buttons that say things like “Lose Weight? Ask me!” I don’t know whether people actually do ask, but the badges might serve as a conversation opener.

So I need to think of brief phrases. Time to brainstorm.

Here are a few that percolated through:

• SquareZ: why not use this site’s name…
• Kewl Squarez: Well, it might make people ask
• Dare to be Square
• Do the Do(sido): Take off on current Mountain Dew ad
• PMS Exercise: stands for Physical, Mental, Social
• GeoMotion
• Euro Squares
• PoMo Squares: stands for Post-Modern…might make people ask
• Square the Circle
• Circle the Square
• Dances in Squares
• Ask Me

While surfing around, I found a thesaurus site: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus. It’s very cool, although putting it on auto-navigate in 3D ended up making me motionsick. Once I get over that, maybe I’ll be able to come up with more phrases…

Here’s a graphic from the virtual thesaurus in 2D mode…but you need to imagine it moving…

This is so cool! Vic and Debbie Ceder’s site now cross references the entries in the Caller database, the Events database, and the Records database. This means that if you look up a caller, you’ll also see all the records recorded by that caller (that Vic owns) and all the events featuring that caller that are entered in the Events database. Very nice, and a great reason for callers to encourage events organizers to make sure their events are listed in the database.

---

Direct Hit is a searchable directory that returns sites in order of popularity (meaning how many times they’re referenced by other sites). Of course, I did a search on square dancing, and got mostly expected results (Dosado.com is on top). One of the things that amused me was a list of “related searches” proposed by DirectHit:

• Dancing
• Square Dance Wear
• Square Dance Badges
• Square Dance Children
• Square Dancing Music
• Square Dance Callers
• Hillbilly
• Callerlab
• Contra Dancing
• Swingers Springfield Ma

HILLBILLY??!?

---

Here’s a collection of articles by Chris Froggat, an Australian caller: This Square Dance World

---

A cute square dance animated GIF that actually shows some dancing:

“Dance Animation”

from What is Modern Square Dancing?

It shows the sequence:

Heads Up to the Middle and Back
Heads Square Thru Four Hands
Dosado
Swing Thru
Boys Run
Ferris Wheel
Centers Pass Thru
Allemande Left
Right and Left Grand
Promenade Home
Bow to your partner

Ecstasy, Flow, and Dancing

Can one find ecstasy of the kind referred to by Donna Hébert in Ecstasy and the Contradance at a modern western square dance? We don’t have live music, so we don’t get the interaction of musicians and dancers that permeates Hébert’s article, but then we have callers who are making up figures based on dancer reactions, so we have a different feedback system…not between musicians and dancers, but between caller and dancers.

---

An interesting exchange between an old-time square dance afficianado and a contra fan:

Phil Jamison – Dare To Be Square! and Robert Reed’s Response to Phil Jamison

This is a good discussion of contras vs. squares (not MWSD, however).

Another interesting pair of articles:

Contra Dancing and the Consumer Mentality and Consumer Mentality – a reply

The relevance to MWSD? Our club organization, which in many parts of the country is having problems because of burnout. Also, it’s relevant to the growing movement towards caller-run clubs. These clubs are likely to be run with a profit motive or the caller will ultimately burn-out.

---

Square Dancers are once again trying to get Square Dance declared the “National Folk Dance” for the whole United States. Some folks seem to think that this would magically solve all of our ills and make square dancing popular again. Let’s get real. And if it didn’t happen in the ’70’s and ’80’s, why should it happen now, when square dancing is less and less representative of American culture? Here’s a thread from rec.folk-dancing on the subject: National Folk Dance Conspiracy!!!

---

So, just in case you don’t get to see your “favorite” ad often enough on TV, you can go to The Ad Critic – All Ads, All The Time. and see it again and again. I thought, with a name like Ad Critic, it might be like Adbusters Culture Jammers Headquarters and actually critique the ads (I wanted to see what’s so funny about the “whazzzup” ads; I guess I’m out of the loop because I just don’t get it). But no, the site just has Quicktime copies of popular ads.

It’s the first day of Spring; it’s snowing here in Albuquerque. First snow we’ve had after weeks of spring-like weather.

Fun with graphics: At ACME License Maker, you can make your own personalized license plate, from any state, some even historical.

“NM Caller License Plate”

My first license was from California in the mid ’60’s, but of course, they didn’t have personalized plates back then, so this would have been an impossible plate:

“CA 1969 Caller License Plate”

ACME also offers other label-making opportunities at ACME Labelmaker. You can go really retro with the Dyno Labelmaker look:

“Dyno Square Dance Caller”

For spiffier banners, check: Adobe’s Create a Banner.

---

This has absolutely nothing to do with square dancing (well, none of the rest of this has anything to do with square dancing either), but it’s cool: Constructor.

Every caller should check out the Lloyd Shaw Foundation. The web site has some information, but joining provides even more…a quarterly publication, often with simple dances that would be suitable for fun nights, and discounts on their publications and recordings, plus the knowledge that you’re supporting an organized effort to preserve the history of square dancing and related dance forms. One project, that’s not mentioned on the web site, but which I think is very important, is Bob Brundage’s oral history interviews with major figures in square dancing. Many of these people aren’t big writers, they’re all getting older, and I think it’s extremely important to capture their recollections about square dancing’s history and development. A 1997 American Square Dance article about Bob’s project is here: Oral History Project Update

---

Wow, another college-based square dance club: Cal Aggie Square Dance, at UC Davis. I also enjoyed their caller’s site, Charles Bridges, especially the dance quotes on his home page.

This is a nice site to refer new square dancers to: Lynn’s Student Square Dance Page. Although the dance information is local to Ventura County, California, there are several pages of information that would be useful to any new student. There are also a lot of photos of various dances in Ventura Country. I’m puzzled by Lynn’s ability to have this page on Xoom without Xoom’s advertizing frame at the top. I wonder how she does that.

Lynn has sites all over the web. She has a domain (dance4fun.com), for Lynn’s Square Dance Page, where she has info on clubs in Ventura County. She also offers free email at the dance4fun site (yourname@squaredance.zzn.com). She has a square dance related bulletin board, Square Dance Discussion on Tripod. It’s not active (the last message was posted on January 9).

Square Dancing & Round Dancing – Suite101.com has a poll going on the dress code; so far dressy jeans and shirts for both men and women and no dress code at all are tied at two votes apiece. This site also has a moribund discussion area.

The SquareDancing.com Forum is a little more active, with the dress code issue inciting the most discussion.

I wonder what are the benefits of an online forum vs. a mailing list. Both the square dancers mailing list and the sd-callers mailing list are active, lively discussion forums.

It’s disheartening to find a nice idea for a web site, Class on the Net, and then realize that either it’s not being updated (last info is from May 1999) or the club is no longer active. This is another site for students, with tips and info about what calls were covered at each class. As more and more people get on the web, it seems like a good idea for every club to keep students up-to-date with a special section on their web site.

I’ve written some annotations on the Hanhurst Tape March 2000. Mostly these are references to the original artists and songs; there’s some extraneous commentary if some song triggered a train of thought.

---

Went to an Advanced dance called by Doug Bennett last night. He did a couple of new Global releases (so new, they’re not available yet), including “Muskrat Love”, the Captain and Tennille hit from the 70’s.

Sometimes websurfing leads to things one would just as soon not know. I like Global Music records a lot. I guess it’s just ironic that I found two of their tunes on an album called 70’S Party Classics Killers. From the commentary: “The title says it all. These are, to use a modern term, a buzz kill.” The album also includes classics like “Feelings” and “(You’re) Having My Baby”.

Be that as it may, we were all singing along on “Muskrat Love”.

Doug called a good dance, working the dancers on hard Advanced calls like Wheel Around and Square Thru from waves. Guess it’s back to basics this Thursday for the Advanced workshop.

Just talked to my brother in Eugene, OR. He’s mildly interested in square dance lessons, so he decided to do a little websurfing to find info on what’s available in Eugene. He didn’t want to call people…he just wanted to do a little exploration…and, being a modern kind of guy, he assumed he could do that on the net. I don’t know what kind of search criteria he used, but he couldn’t find anything. Moreover, when he finally decided to pick up a phone and call the Emerald Square and Round Dance Center (which he knew about because he’d been to a dance that I’d called there), there was no answering machine.

Okay, I started surfing while we were talking (love having two phone lines…would love DSL or cable even more) and pretty quickly made my way to Square Dance Directory in Oregon Emerald Empire, which had a link to Emerald Square and Round Dance Center. Too bad that page (a) hadn’t been updated since 1998 (I could tell because the only event listing was for a 1998 event) and (b) had no links to clubs that dance there. It’s essentially a dead end.

Okay, back to the previous page. Quickly zip down to the bottom of the page to turn off the music (I’m glad they provide the option to turn it off, but I wish they’d give me the option to turn it on instead). Find a club in Eugene, Whirl-A-Ways. Go to that page, but it looks like a template page (even has the same stupid music…quick, turn it off) and I can see no signs that it’s been updated since its creation. No special events listed…talks about lessons in September, but there’s no year…there is an email address and a phone number.

Let’s try another page, Danebo Circle Eight: same template, same music, some events listed (last one in 1999). Talks about lessons, but again, no year. But! there’s a URL for the caller! I’ll go to Kirby & Christina’s Home Page. And hark! there’s a link to Danebo Circle 8, a different page for the club. It’s got a picture, it’s got some color, it’s got some signs of life (upcoming events listed through April 2000). It’s got a lessons page (which also has no date, but at least I have some faith that lessons actually will start in September since the rest of the site is being kept up-to-date).

Well, I could continue (and I probably will, in an attempt to find a suitable place for lessons for my brother and his wife). But there’s a moral here: people do use the web to try to get information. It shouldn’t be so hard to get it. Web sites should be kept up-to-date. It should be easy to get a list of all the lessons in a city. Square dance centers should have at least an answering machine.

At the Albuquerque Square Dance Center (oh well, this page hasn’t been updated since 1999), a caller, Rich Stewart, donated an old 486 machine with some freeware (came with the modem) telephone software that allows the Center to present a lot of information using a hierarchical system of menus controlled by the caller’s (telephone not square dance) touch-tone phone. The local callers association spearheaded this after the only square dance clothing store in town shut down. We realized that there were only two listings in the Yellow Pages under Square Dance: the store and the center. So the center, which previously had no answering machine, would become the defacto place that people would call to find out about square dancing in Albuquerque. It became very important to make sure that there would be something to answer the phone at the center. Rich did a great job setting up the system…and, of course, having old hardware around helps. But old hardware is cheap; it might as well be answering phones instead of sitting around becoming even more obsolete.

Looking for more ideas for themes to liven up your regular dances? Try 365 Reasons To Party. Of course, tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day, so you can drag out all your Irish tunes, but did you know that it’s also Jerry Lewis’ birthday? Now I’ve never been a big fan of Jerry Lewis, but the French (for some inscrutable reason) love him. So you could do a whole French thing…now there’s an obscure connection that only a die-hard movie fan would get.

---

Looks like Bill Heyman has done a redesign on Western Square Dancing. Still some blue and green, but the left hand navigation bar is now yellow, which makes it easier to read the text. I’m not crazy about the mix of serif and non-serif fonts, though…kind of looks like the style sheets aren’t being applied consistently.

---

Looking to cut a record? Alliance Records is the first site I’ve seen that spells out the details: what you’ll pay, what you’ll get. Unfortunately, the site isn’t fully fleshed out yet; there are still some empty pages.

How about this for a good domain name: lovetodance.com. Too bad it’s an under construction home page.

Here’s someone who feels about partner dancing the way I feel about square dancing: Social Partner Dancing. She says:

I love partner dancing. It is the best thing I have done for myself in this life of mine. As with many of my friends it began more or less as something new to do. But I find it is much, much more than that. It has become a way of life.

I also like the graphics…modern and fun.