Square dance Square dance A square dance is a dance for four couples (eight dancers in total) arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, facing the middle of the square. Square dances were first documented in 16th-century England but were also quite common in France and throughout Europe. They came to North America with the European settlers and have undergone considerable development there. In some countries and regions, through preservation and repetition, square dances have attained the status of a folk dance. The Western American square dance may be the most widely known form worldwide, possibly due to its
Modern western square dance variations fall into the following basic categories: Keywords: cowboy dance, frontier, folk dances from Europe, new developments Keywords: Henry Ford, Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw, the publication of "Cowboy Dances", saving the form from extinction, Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw's Cheyenne Mountain Dancers, courses for square dance teachers Keywords: World War II's returning veterans and the home/family culture of the 1950s, "transition from the traditional, visiting couple type of dancing into all-four-couple-working kind of dancing in the 1950s" (Herb Egender), the amplifier, phonograph, square dance records, Square Dancing Magazine (formerly Sets in Order), Step By Step Through Modern Square Dancing (Jim Mayo) Modern western