Square_Dance_as_the_American_Folk_Dance_of_the_USA - trad-callers@lists.sharedweight.net

23 Nov 2017

Jeeze - I thought this cr*p died out last century. It endures. What riles me in the shear
arrogance of the MSSD fraternity.

The link below is to Colin Quigley's recent repost.

https://www.academia.edu/830056/Reflections_on_the_Hearing_to_Designate_the…

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 Form

Quigley, Colin . Yearbook for Traditional Music ; Canberra 33 (2001): 145.

 ''Dance in its socio-political aspects,'' one theme of the ICTM
Ethnochoreology Sub-Group Symposium at which this paper was presented(1), 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 side show to the profound inter-racial, -ethnic, and -class
conflicts that erupted then in Los Angles into some of the largest American civil unrest
of the century, but the social and political struggle over diversity in our country is a
dispute with serious implications for those engaged in arts research as well as for
activists and advocates in the public sector. I will approach this large and pervasive
issue by examining the terms in which one such debate--the legislative effort to have
Congress designate the square dance as the national American folk dance--has been cast. My
discussion of the cultural politics of the square dance form, with which I am familiar
through both personal participation and research, will utilise primarily the statements of
those who testified before the congressional committee considering the proposed
legislation in 1988. I will ''unpack'' the rhetoric of contention and
deconstruct the discourse as represented in the text of the hearing. In its published form
the hearing documents constitute approximately fifty pages of testimony by four panels of
witnesses for and against the proposed legislation (U.S. Congress 1988). These witnesses
include advocates for the bill representing leaders of various organised square dance
associations and dance callers; opponents include recognised dance performers from
African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native American ethnic groups, as well as
professional folklorists and one square dance caller not affiliated with the sponsoring
organisations. I will cull from their testimony the active rhetoric and analyse the terms
of its construction, seeking the roots of its power to persuade, contextualising terms as
needed so that the reader might appreciate the ideologies their use invokes. As I proceed
I will note the concomitant legacies with which American folk dance scholarship continues
to grapple and elucidate the implications of different positions. The two sides arrayed
against one another in this debate represent tensions with a long history in the U.S. but
now of global significance as well. Close examination reveals that the opposition is
constructed in shared terms, each containing and evoking the other's view. I hope such
insight offers hope of surmounting these conflicts through recasting its terms. Indeed, I
chose to examine the rhetoric of this debate, which might seem overly transparent in an
American ...... 
p145
context, for presentation in this international forum, with the hope that better
understanding of American cultural politics may provide a stimulating foil against which
to view other dispositions of what I believe to be central issues of our times. This
legislation, a similar bill defeated in 1986, and a previously successful bill designating
the square dance as the national folk dance for the year of 1984, was proposed by leaders
of the nationwide network of recreational clubs,who perform what is generally referred to
as modern Western square dance. They actively campaigned for its passage, presenting
numerous petitions with thousands of signatures gathered from their membership to the
congressional committee.

(1) ICTM Ethnochoreology Study Group symposium, Nafplion, Greece, 4 July 1992.