Found this while googling “I hate square dancing”

This makes me want to Square Dance, this red does. Not round dance, mind you, but square dance. Yes, let’s all get off our respective couches on which we sit like so much respective fishes, and grab our partners, do si do, a la man left and away we go. What is “a la man left”, pray tell? Or is it “alaman” or “alamande” or “almondine”? The “do si do” move has always confused me. I simply am not a “do si do” person. In fact, I hate Square Dancing so why am I going on and on about it? In red, yet. We simply cannot have Red Square dancing because the Red Square is in Russia and this is an American column. This is a Star Spangled Banner column.

This is from a column at a site related to Stephen Sondheim. Huh.

There were three other hits.

• I hate Square dancing. I hate line dancing. I hate Shania Twain most of all.
• I wanted today off because I hate square dancing and we would have done that in GYM today.
• I hate square dancing, detest it. Where did they take us to? square dancing.

BTW, there are 22 hits for “I Love Square Dancing”

It’s the Google Dance. These are pictures of a real dance at (I guess) a Google party. But remember:

They put some pages in,
They take some pages out,
They calculate the PageRank,
Then they shake it all about,
They wait until the full moon
Then they mix the servers up,
Thats what its all about.

Last night, we took Jerry Jestin, a fabulous caller who stayed with us this weekend, to his Plus dance for the Allemanders, stayed to dance an Advanced tip before the Plus dance started, and then took off for a private party, featuring wonderful food and a local band, Wagogo.

The party-goers were multi-ethnic, multi-generational, gay, straight…in other words, diverse. The dancing was unstructured, although it was too crowded to do much more than groove in place. I tried to imagine recruiting for square dancing. I couldn’t.

Earlier, we went to a UNM women’s basketball game, where our unranked Lobo women beat the 17th-ranked Texas Longhorns 77-70. During halftime, a little girl cheerleader group performed. Little girls seem to love group dancing; the halftime shows frequently feature local dance and cheer troupes, with bunches of girls and young women moving in unison. Seems like square dancing could be popular with them…except that one needs (at least traditionally) boys…and they’d rather play sports.

Found this:

We stopped by Schnuck’s on our way home, and some car was parked in a handicapped spot, which a handicapped license plate thing and all.

The bumper sticker said, “I love Square Dancing.”

???????

here. Former square dancers? Handicapable square dancers? Just shows how much square dancers do love square dancing.

Or how about a charm:

There’s a new version of CSDS available: 1.11.02. Mostly looks like minor tweaks.

Did a google search on “Why I dance”:

• A student and pilot
• Jive Magazine readers
• Jay Robinson
• Sherezzah
• Jalilah Sahar
• Miscellaneous ballroom dancers
• Darie (look for the 3/12/2001 entry)
• Raven Davis
• Roeland M.M. Hogt
• Linda J. Doerksen
• Ali Braden
• Kalay Mordock

A national dance?

As you know, I’m not in favor of square dancing being declared the United States’ official “national dance”. But that’s because I’m not in favor of any dance being the official national dance. Should every nation have a national dance? That’s the premise of this article. The author says, “Why ignore such a simple way to communicate something about the character of a country?” But what is the highly multi-cultured US’s character? And what would square dancing say about our national character?

Probably some pretty good things: teamwork, cooperation, looking for new challenges, unwilling to tolerate boredom. And some other things: not in touch with our bodies (square dancing almost discourages any body moves other than walking and (for girls) swishing skirts), rigid gender roles, lack of creativity (only the caller gets to be creative).

What else would square dancing say about our national character? Add your comment by clicking on Comments at the end of this article.

Check out this 1939 interview with Sammy Spring, a Massachusetts fiddler and dirt farmer. Here are a couple of good quotes:

That’s what I call living. Folks don’t know how to live today. They won’t go out like they used to, ‘cept to go to the movies, most of ’em, or stay at home and listen to the radio. Those old chicken pie suppers and things like that used to make them more neighborly. It’s too bad. When you look at the way folks used to live and see how they git along today. They ain’t no more of that ole spirit of corporation. Just dog eat dog today.

…

You know they’s some sense to square dancin’. Why I rather see younguns dance that way then to try to do that crazy jitterbug stuff. Ain’t no sense to it at all. Jumpin round like crazy loons or monkeys trying to climb a tree, that ain’t dancin’. They aint no sense to it.

Remember, this is 1939…sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?