Here’s a site with a very appealing description of contra dancing. It’s interesting to compare and contrast with modern squares.

Here’s what the author says about square dancing:

Some of the moves are similar to square dancing (swing your partner, make a star, chain the women ? a move that sounds more kinky than it is) while others are unique to contra. I usually downplay the similarities because contra differs greatly from most people’s mental pictures of square dancing or their grade-school experience of it. We always dance to live music and don’t wear square dance costumes. Square dancing involves four couples dancing in a group while a contra line can accommodate as many couples as space allows. In a typical contra evening, there will often be one or two square dances and even a pair of waltzes.

Here’s what he says about why he enjoys contra:

I enjoy contra dancing because it’s a place where time stands still. I can dance for hours and it seems like a minute. It’s a place where I can turn off my brain and just relax. Contra dancing, like no other activity, compels me to live in the present. When I’m dancing, I’m not regretting the past or worried about the future. I’m totally focused on the present, a discipline that leads to happiness.

If we take out the part about turning off his brain, that would describe what I like about square dancing. And for me, the brain turn-on helps me be in the present; there’s no room for thinking about other stuff.

He also says:

Contra dance is playful and fun, a place where adults can be kids. I enjoy contra because it’s a dance style where it’s more important to have fun than to do it right; it’s simple enough that beginners learn very quickly; and it allows experienced dancers and beginners to enjoy being partners together.

I think the first sentence also can apply to square dancing, depending on the people in the square. And I’d like to think that the first part of the second sentence applies, but I fear that it doesn’t always. And the last part doesn’t apply at all; beginners can’t learn MWSD quickly (although I think the learning part is fun), and experienced dancers don’t particularly enjoy dancing with beginners all the time. We’ll do it because we know it’s important that beginners get the dance time, and we also know that we may be beginners at the next dance program and will be depending on the kindness of the more experienced dancers to help us through.

And this may be square dancing’s downfall; we send out mixed messages. We need beginners, but we’re tired of angeling. We need new dancers, but it’s more fun to dance with people who know what they’re doing. It’s hard to integrate new dancers into a floor of experienced dancers, and for many experienced dancers, it’s been too long since they were beginners. In square dancing’s heyday, there were lots of new dancers so callers could cater to them; now there are usually just a few, cowering in the back squares. What’s challenging choreographically for a new dancer who still takes a second to remember how to do a call is different from what’s challenging to a dancer who’s been dancing the level for years and has seen lots of choreographic variations. (I’ve had experience with this recently as a new and inexperienced C3A dancer: I have a helluva time doing “interesting” C3A choreography.)

Do I have an answer? Not really; it’s hard for me to think about going back to nothing but Basic or CDP-style square dancing. I enjoy the complexity. But I also think we may have evolved ourselves right out of being an accessible dance form and right into extinction…not of square dancing, but of MWSD-style square dancing in its current form.