Square Dance and the Making of Community The quintessential American dance?

• Actually, it has French roots

The quadrille With the rise of jazz dances, it retreated to the country, to Appalachia and the West

Grange Hall: Where farming and dance meet Grange Hall Interior Traditional Square Dancing

“There are no exclusive activities, no special dances that separate dancers and so differentiate among the dancing group by status.” (Burns, “Social Symbolism in a Square Dance” 315). Rural Roots

• Tractor Square Dancing!

Modern Western Club Squares

Dancers must know hundreds of patterns and thousands of variations on them. -140 yard petticoats -modern “frontierware” Not just for Americans anymore! Lloyd Shaw 1890-1958

On Suburbia

Images from Levittown, PA The suburbs resulted in:

• Urban flight • Residence in brand new developments with cookie cutter uniformity • The growth of highway system • By the end of the 1950’s, nearly ¼ of the US population resided in the suburbs Growth of suburbia resulted from

◊ An influx of young men returning from WWII (200 million American newlyweds sought homes of their own) ◊ Veterans Administration provided no down payment mortgages ◊ Fear generated from the Supreme Court’s Brown (1954) decision, requiring racial integration in public schools. Why did square dancing eventually see a decline in popularity? and Gay and Lesbian Square Dancing

Chicago TV news report about gay square dancing Gay Square Dance Convention Square dance at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood -Doug Plummer Rock and Roll and Dance Music • “Rock and Roll had found a social body language that matched the novelty of the music and the feeling of liberation that it celebrated.” (American Popular Music, 240)

From "Rock around the Clock" American Bandstand

Television show based in Philadelphia that aired from 1952 to 1989

Start at 0:26 The Twist!

Performed by Chubby Checker Elvis Presley

• Jailhouse Rock (1957)

The warden threw a party in the county jail. The prison band was there and they began to wail. The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing. You should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing. Let's rock, everybody, let's rock. Everybody in the whole cell block was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock. • Little Richard

It is sexual inhibition that rock is usually credited—or blamed– for challenging…with the music serving to convey a less inhibited African American sensibility to the repressed white middle-class mainstream”(Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets) Joy, Hysteria, Beatlemania, Social Catharsis? And why such an effect on girls?

Contra Dancing and the Search for Authenticity

Doug Plummer -photo Contemporary Contra Dance

• Perpetual E-motion • Techno Contra

Doug Plummer -photo