Re: [Callers] Family dance- educational supplements?

Claire, A while back, you wrote: Here are a few items that may be fun, educational, or both: 1. This web page http://www.voyagerrecords.com/LN358.htm has some interesting (to me, and perhaps also to some of the older kids in the group you'll be calling for) information about the role of music and dance in the Lewis and Clark expedition. These are notes to accompany a CD of tunes from that era. If you look at the note on the individual tunes, you'll learn (from the notes for track 18) that the Virginian Reel, also known as "Sir Roger de Coverley", was a favorite dance of George Washington. (Washington died in 1799, just a few years before the start of the Lewisand Clark expedition [1804-1806]). 2. In this video http://squaredancehistory.org/items/show/71 dance caller, musician, and historian Phil Jamison talks about the role of African American musicians i(mostly slaves, some free) in the development of dance calling. 3. Here's a Paramount newsreel (I wonder how many kids today know what newsreels were) about the world's biggest square dance, held as part of the Sant Monica Diamond Jubilee in 1950: http://squaredancehistory.org/items/show/1311 This page http://squaredancehistory.org/items/browse?tag=Santa+Monica has links to various other items about the event. You can read about some of the amazing organizational work that went into putting it on. (Chartered buses bringing in dancers from square dance clubs in surrounding cities, where they'd been practicing dances from the Diamond Jubilee program at their regular dance nights; local boy scouts with flags [pieces of colored cardboard on long sticks] signaling places where squares needed another couple so that they'd be more easily spotted in the huge crowd; all sorts of special preparations by the city Well, we’ll repave the street – we’ll put up this band stand – we’ll get the local anti-aircraft battery still stationed here to furnish the lighting – we’ll go to the studios – we’ll get them to set up the speakers – ... etc.) 4. Speaking of studios, did you know that Chuck Jones, one of the animators of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, was an avid square dancer? He sometimes contributed artwork and articles to _Sets in Order_ square dance magazine. Here are covers from all the issues of the magazine http://newsquaremusic.com/sioindex.html Can you some covers featuring Bugs and friends? Scroll down for a list of the ones I've found. | | V | | V | | V | | V | | V Keep going. | | V | | V | | V | | V | | V Just a little more. | V | | V | | V | | V | | V I see Bugs Bunny on the covers for March, 1951; April 1954; and June, 1956. The cover for June, 1962, shows Pepé Le Pew on his way from Paris to the National Square Dance convention in Miami. Cheers, --Jim