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Square and Round Dancing |
News For September 1 - 15, 2005
Contents
Berlin Square Dancers Do-Si-Do to 'YMCA' (1998)
by Mary Beth Warner The normal quiet of a Sunday spring evening in the German capital was broken recently by all the whooping and hollering down at the White Rose recreation center. Lofting from the basement windows are calls of "yee-hah" and "do-si-do," as dozens of feet slide across the parquet floor. Due to the cramped, temporary quarters, the 30-odd T-shirt and jeans-clad dancers aren't outfitted in their traditional garb, including full petticoats for the women and Western-style shirts with bolo ties for the men. About 100 people in all belong to the Berlin Swinging Bears, just one of the city's nearly dozen square dance clubs. Square dancing was brought to Germany and other European countries by American military personnel after World War II. At first, Germans could only go to dances on US bases if they were invited by local servicemen or women. As its popularity grew, Germans began forming their own clubs. http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1998/05/14/fp8s2-csm.htm
Square Dance History in the U.S.
The square dance is an American institution. It began in New England when the first settlers and the immigrant groups that followed, brought with them their various national dances, which we now call folk dances, but which were the popular dances of the day in the countries of their origin - the schottische, the quadrille, the jigs and reels and the minuet, to name a few. After a week of toil in building new homes and carving homes out of virgin forest, the settlers would gather in the community center on Saturday evening and enjoy dancing their old-world favorites. http://www.dosado.com/articles/hist-maca.html
Last updated Saturday 8 December 2007