Yep. That happened back in 2001. They try from time to time. Luckily it hasn't been successful... too many other vernacular dances of the US to pick one.
Nancy

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 7:57 AM Chris J Brady chrisjbrady@yahoo.com [trad-dance-callers] <trad-dance-callers@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

Just received an alert about this ...

https://www.academia.edu/830056/Reflections_on_the_Hearing_to_Designate_the_Square_Dance_as_the_American_Folk_Dance_of_the_United_States_Cultural_Politics_and_an_American_Vernacular_Dance_

Reflections on the Hearing to" Designate the Square Dance as the American Folk Dance of the United States": Cultural Politics and an American Vernacular Dance …
Yearbook for traditional music, 2001
Colin Quigley

Dance in its socio-political aspects,&amp;quot; one theme of the ICTM Ethnochoreology Sub-Group Symposium at which this paper was presented1, was a timely one immediately following, as it did, the Los Angeles riots of spring 1992. At that time, one could open the arts section of a newspaper or magazine to find debate raging over such concepts as multiculturalism and diversity. Such controversy within the arts community might have seemed merely a sideshow to the profound inter-racial,-ethnic, and-class conflicts that erupted then in Los Angles into ...
Publisher: JSTOR
Publication Date: Jan 1, 2001
Publication Name: Yearbook for traditional music

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Dr. Colin Quigley is Course Director and Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at UL and Emeritus Professor UCLA Ethnomusicology, World Arts and Cultures.. His broad disciplinary affiliations are to ethnomusicology, ethnochoreology and folkloristics. His research interests are in European and European-American traditions of music and dance. He has published on both as found in Newfoundland, Canada. Close to the Floor (1985) examined the traditional dancing of the province’s small fishing communities, Music from the Heart (1995), the creative process of an outstanding French-Newfoundland fiddler. He began work in east central Europe following 1989 and curated the 1999 Smithsonian Institution Folklife Festival 'Gateways to Romania' exhibit. While on a Fulbright senior research fellowship he investigated the inter-ethnicity of dance and dance music in Transylvania. Field recordings from this project are incorporated, along with extensive annotation, in the Indiana University EVIA Digital Archive (www.eviada.org). Colin worked for two years in Budapest observing its lively traditional and world music scene before moving to Ireland in 2008. His work has appeared in journals including Ethnomusicology; The Yearbook for Traditional Music; Acta Ethnographica Hungarica; and Inbhear, the online journal for Irish music and Dance produced at the irish World Academy (www.inbhear.ie). He has been the Chair of the Irish Music Study Group of the SEM, and General (founding) Editor of 'Ethnomusicology Ireland' the journal of the Irish National Committee of the ICTM (www.ictm.ie). A fiddler and banjo player himself, he offers master classes and workshops in the fiddling and dancing of Newfoundland and the American South-East.l

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Nancy Mamlin
Durham, NC