Online Dance Sources
Dance sources on line:
Looking for some traditional style square dances? Or maybe some contras? There are innumerable sources on line; here’s one:
American Country Dances On Line
And here’s a list of sources:
Speaking of set dances…
Probably all square dance callers should be able to call the Levi Jackson Rag by Pat Shaw. Why? Because it uses 5 couples. It’s done to set music (you can hear a sample on Michael Barker’s Musical Career page and order a recording from the Lloyd Shaw Foundation’s Recreational Dance Program) and it has set choreography: Levi Jackson Rag. And it’s fun! It moves a little quickly for MWSDers and it definitely needs a walkthru or two or three…
I think there’s room in MWSD for set or pattern dances. I know that I get requests for the Grand Colonel Spin (a 64-count figure) and even for Teacup Chain. Some callers have argued that people like the Plus program because it includes calls like Relay the Deucey and Spin Chain and Exchange the Gears that allow the dancers to just dance for 20 beats or so. Jerry Story did a weekend in Gallup recently, and Albuquerque dancers came back talking about how Jerry wants to get rid of Plus because, after all, one can use Mainstream calls to put together combos that mimic the Plus calls. (I asked if he did that with Relay the Deucey…he didn’t.) But that doesn’t address the “dancing” issue.
An Advanced dancer described a fun figure that he’d done at a contra/traditional square dance, and said he wished we (i.e. MWSDers) would do more of those old-time figures. (This one, called by Doc Litchman, was called something like “Bachelor Shack” and involved lots of stars and arm turns.)
You can find old calls on Jim Penrod’s site. Another place is old square dance records…most use standard 64-count figures, but occasionally you’ll find an older, more circle-figured one.
Today is Stevie Wonder’s birthday. I don’t have any singing call records of Stevie Wonder songs, but I’ve heard callers do “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
On this day, in 1938, Louis Armstrong recorded “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
In 1954, The Pajama Game made its Broadway debut. “Hernando’s Hideaway” is from that musical.