1 of 3
Grab your partner
Enthusiastic couples dance the night away at the 2022 South Carolina Square and Round Dance Convention.
2 of 3
Take her for a spin
Sam Rowan of Bluffton’s Sun Squares dance club twirls Linda Collins, president of the Hilton Head Oceanwaves.
3 of 3
Dressing for the dance floor
Causal clothes may be the norm at local club dances, but everyone brings out their finest dancing attire for the state convention fashion show. Pat Dixon and Pat Gorman represent the Camden Hi‑Steppers at the 2022 convention.
It’s Saturday night at the Brookland Baptist Banquet & Convention Center, on the second night of the South Carolina Square and Round Dance Convention, and beneath the chandeliers of Exhibition Hall F, a man in a blue suit and a black cowboy hat is singing karaoke to the familiar tune “Come Sail Away” from prog-rock band Styx.
“Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me,” he sings during each chorus, but then, instead of the usual lyrics for the verses, he begins half-speaking, half-singing in time to the music. If you listen closely, he is telling the dancers on the dance floor exactly what to do, for he is their caller.
“There’s three rules of square dancing that are never supposed to be broken,” says longtime dancer Barbara Lassiter of Charleston’s Belles and Beaus dance club. “One, is listen to the caller. Two, is listen to the caller. Three? Listen to the caller. There should be no talking in the square because the caller is the one in charge.”
“Circle left,” the caller sings, and the dancers hold hands and walk left in a circle. “Allemande,” he says, and the couples grab each other’s left arms and swing around. “Promenade,” he sings, “Now swing, now slide through” and they promenade and swing and slide through—their prairie skirts twirling, their suede shoes gliding along the wood floor, their hands clapping on the downbeats.
They are not, however, competing. Nor are they trying to perform a synchronized dance. They are participating instead in one of the oldest forms of group dance in the United States—a tradition that may be disappearing but that square dancers all over the state are trying to keep alive.
“It’s not just the exercise we get,” says Pat Gorman of Camden’s Hi-Steppers, who has been square dancing for 25 years. “It’s the fun, the fellowship. It’s learning about people and caring about people.”
Square dancing—a dance for four couples that make up a “square,” in which a caller calls out the movements—arrived in America with the earliest European settlers. The dance traces its origins back to English country dances and French quadrilles, but in America, it became associated with cowboys and known as “modern western square dancing.” Hence the prairie skirts and crenellated dresses, the cowboy boots and bolo ties.
Lassiter explains that square dancing became especially popular in the early 1900s, when Henry Ford hired a caller and hosted square dances for his employees at Ford Motor Company.
“And then it spread out,” she says. “By the 1960s, it was very popular because we had classes.”
This is a familiar refrain these days among square dancers: the heyday of square dancing was “back in the day,” when it was a way to socialize in an era before technology.
“I was in the high school band, and we wanted to raise money for uniforms and such,” says Sam Rowan, of Bluffton’s Sun City Squares. “My parents said, ‘Let’s put on a square dance,’ and 200 people showed up.”
Dick Kaulback, of Firehouse Squares in Charleston, says his parents were into square dancing in the 1950s and 1960s and once were among a planeload of square dancers who flew to Europe for a dancing vacation.
But these days?
“Activity is down everywhere,” says Brad Tomlinson, a caller out of Charleston with the stage name of El Toro. “It takes more than one or two classes to learn to dance, and when COVID hit, that didn’t help the situation, either. Because all the halls were shut down. For two years, there was no dancing going.”
“Now we’re doing good to get a square together because the population has gotten older, and our children didn’t pick up the love of square dancing that we had,” says Lassiter.
Still, many folks in the square dancing community are trying to think of ways to bring the younger generations into these dance halls. The governing body of callers, CALLERLAB, has shortened the amount of time it takes to learn the beginner’s courses (called Mainstream), in which you learn nearly 70 movements. The dress codes aren’t strictly country-western. Some callers are trying to use more contemporary music.
“You gotta use the music they like, and if you don’t, they ain’t coming back,” says Joe Arnold of Rock Hill. “Then you gotta show them it works.”
And how it works is this: For each dance, called a “tip,” there is a pattern call and a singing call. This could be a dance for couples who have completed the Mainstream program (69 calls) or Plus (31 extra calls). Or it could be for those who have made it all the way to Advanced 2 (181 calls) or even Challenge 3A (429 total calls).
No matter the program, you step onto the dance floor with your partner and join your square by facing inward. When the music starts and the caller begins making the call, you begin making the moves you’ve learned. To be a good square dancer, you need a good eye, a good ear, and a good memory. It’s the job of the caller to construct the dance, and all callers have their own style.
“When I’m calling, I want to see people continuously move,” says Arnold, who admits that being a caller is part-karaoke singer, part-DJ, part-choreographer, part-comedian and part-teacher. “I don’t want to see them stop. So, you have to call the next call before they’re done with the present call. And I want to see them do one thing: smile. If they’re smiling, I’ve done my job.”
As any square dancer will tell you, it’s one thing to sit on the sidelines and watch from the seats. It’s entirely another thing to get up and actually dance.
So, when Dot Tunstall beckons me (the sidelines reporter who doesn’t know a do-si-do from an allemande, much less a weave the ring from a box the gnat) onto the dance floor to be her partner, I say the only thing you can say when asked to dance: “I’d be delighted.”
I’m more than a bit worried that as a newbie I will screw things up, but Gorman is quick to point out another important part of square dancing.
“Some of the best times we’ve had—laughing and cutting up—is when you have experienced dancers who mess up,” he explains. “We laugh and carry on, knowing we’re having a ball.”
The caller promises he’ll call an easy one. It’s a classic boom-chuck song, but I can’t make out the lyrics. My eyes are on Dot, and my ears are straining toward the caller. When we start to dance, it’s all a bit dizzying and puzzling—this circling and passing and swinging and changing partners—and it occurs to me that I might be bouncing around in the square as chaotically as a pinball.
But as the caller returns us at the end of the dance to our original positions, there’s no doubt about it: I’m smiling, I’m laughing, my heart rate is up, and I have the mental satisfaction of having solved a puzzle. And I recall something Tomlinson told me earlier that evening.
“This activity was founded on fun and fellowship,” he says. “Good, clean-cut fun and fellowship.”
___
Get There
Interested in learning how to square dance? Local clubs all across South Carolina welcome newcomers. For more information, including a list of local clubs, visit scsquaredance.com. The site also has information on the 2023 S.C. Square and Round Dance State Convention, scheduled for April 28–29 at The Shield Church in Rock Hill.