In exploring the history of modern so-called western square dancing (“MWSD”), it’s important to bear this in mind: MWSD was not invented as a conscious departure from other styles, but evolved gradually out of traditional western dancing
between the mid-to-late 1940s and the mid-1970s.
The visible attributes of MWSD – the structure of clubs and federations, the dress code, lessons as a prerequisite to club membership, the married couple as the norm – were in place by the early 1950s, when most callers were still using
mostly traditional material. In a reflection of the wider American culture of the era, women were often referred to as “girls” or “gals,” but “ladies” was the default. Men were always “gents.”
To the best of my knowledge and recollection, it wasn’t until the calls “run,” “trade,” “fold,” and “circulate” were introduced – all in the mid-1960s – that “boys/girls” became more common than “ladies/gents.” I note that “girls trade”
isn’t a whole lot easier to say than “ladies trade,” so there may have been one or more other factors behind the shift. But there definitely was a shift, and it didn’t happen until people had been square dancing in clubs for about 20 years.
Sources, apart from my own memory: Monthly issues of Sets in Order and
American Squares, along with the Sets in Order Yearbooks – all of which are available online.
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century
(available now)
From: Jerome Grisanti <jerome.grisanti@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 12:20 PM
To: Tony Parkes <tony@hands4.com>
Cc: Joe Harrington <contradancerjoe@gmail.com>; contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
Subject: Re: [Callers] Re: Gentlespoons/Ladles (from Rompin' Stompin')
Tony,
On a side note, do you happen to know how and when modern western square dance callers adopted the "boys/girls" nomenclature that is now common? Did they ever use ladies/gents?
— Jerome Grisanti
On Wed, Feb 8, 2023, 9:55 AM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Joe Harrington wrote:
> When I started dancing in the late 1980s… Callers were taking the revolutionary step of not calling "men" and "women" but rather using "ladies" and "gents", to signal that switching roles was ok, since nobody referred to themselves as a "lady" or a "gent" in casual conversation.
Where was this, Joe? And are you talking about contra callers (rather than ECD)? I can only speak about the NYC area in the 1960s and early ’70s, and New England starting in the late ’60s and continuing to the present. In both regions, square/contra callers (contras were a subcategory of square dance until around 1975) universally used “gents/ladies.” (I believe ECD teachers have always used “men/women,” presumably emulating Playford and Cecil Sharp.) AFAIK, northeastern callers pretty consistently used “gents/ladies” until some of them started to move away from gender-related terms. Tolman and Page’s Country Dance Book (1937) uses “gents/ladies,” as do most of the other standard American dance books from the 1900s to the 1950s (a few, aimed at schoolteachers, use “boys/girls”).
I know of no region where callers changed from “men/women” to “gents/ladies.” I know that some callers, beginning I think in the ’80s, changed from “gents/ladies” to “men/women,” feeling that “gentlemen” and “ladies” smacked of classism. (One female caller, in an essay titled “I am not a lady,” requested that other callers not use her contra compositions if they adhered to “gents/ladies.”) As an amateur (= lover) of dance history, I would like to know about past changes of which I was unaware.
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century
(available now)
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