Bay Point Club Square Dance

A Swinging History

Square dance aficionados trace the activity back to several European ancestors. In England around 1600, teams of six trained performers—all male, for propriety’s sake, and wearing bells for extra oomph—began presenting choreographed sequences known as the morris dance. This fad is thought to have inspired English country dance, in which couples lined up on village greens to practice weaving, circling and swinging moves reminiscent of modern-day square dancing. Over on the continent, meanwhile, 18th-century French couples were arranging themselves in squares for social dances such as the quadrille and the cotillion. Folk dances in Scotland, Scandinavia and Spain are also thought to have influenced square dancing.

Read the Complete Article on he History of Sqaure Dancing on the History Channel

Native American influence on the culture of American social dance dates back to the 1600s, Jamison writes in his book, when a Native American fiddler–the only fiddler  in Maine–provided music for social dances.  At the same time, cultural mixing meant that “by the early 1800s European social dances were being danced alongside the ceremonial dances in Native American communities.” These influences also went the other way, he writes.

Square dancing, like more or less everything else in American history, is a product of multiple cultures and pasts.