Michael Dyck wrote:
> Quigley wrote the paper in 1992, about hearings held in 1988.
> A look at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guides/squaredance.html
> suggests that little has happened on that front since then.
Some years ago, after the 1988 bill failed to pass, I heard (from several sources I consider reliable) that the modern square dance (MSD) people had decided to take a breather from lobbying Congress and to concentrate their efforts at the state level. When a majority of states had passed laws naming the square dance as their state dance, the MSD people planned to go back to Congress and say “See, the American people want this.”
I’m sorry to say that quite a few states have gone this route – “sorry” because, in a way, having so many states with the same “official” dance is worse than having a national dance. The state level is where diversity should manifest itself. For the most part, each state has its own flower, tree, bird, song, food, etc. and is proud of them and their relative uniqueness.
On the bright side, MSD has undergone such a decline that its advocates may not have even the clout they did in 1988. (Attendance at the National SD Convention used to routinely approach and often exceed 20,000; lately it’s hovered around 3,000. Most of the clubs in New England that existed 20-30 years ago have folded.)
To be clear, I’m fine with the existence of MSD; what annoys me is when its practitioners refer to it as “_square_ dancing” (with a definite accent on the first word) and speak and act as if it’s the only dance form entitled to the name. (For those of you who weren’t active in the ’80s: The MSD people at that time spoke out of both sides of their mouths. When traditionalists complained that “square dance” in the wording of the bill really meant MSD, MSDers added a line to the bill saying “square dance” included “square, round, clogging, contra, and heritage dance,” “heritage” being their made-up term for traditional squares plus Colonial and other period dances. But outside of those lobbying efforts, many MSDers continued fighting to exclude traditional dance forms from the public’s image of square dancing. Bob Dalsemer, who was an esteemed traditional caller even then, spoke to this point in his testimony against the 1988 bill.)
I take no pleasure in seeing clubs disappear, but I do feel some relief that MSD’s influence on American culture seems to be waning.
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century
(to be published real soon)