Modern Western square dance

Modern western square dance (also called western square dance, contemporary western square dance, modern American square dance or modern square dance) is one of two American types of square dancing, along with traditional square dance. As a dance form, modern western square dance grew out of traditional square dance in the American West. The term western square dance, for some, is synonymous with "cowboy dance" or traditional western square dance. Therefore, this article uses the term "modern western square dance" to describe the contemporary non-historical dance which grew out of the traditional dance. Square dancing was the national folk dance of the United States in 1982 and 1983. Modern western square dance, like traditional square dance, is directed by a caller. In modern western square dance the caller strings together a sequence of individual square dance calls to make a figure or sequence. These calls are the building blocks of the choreography that is danced by the individuals – square dancers – in the squares. There are eight people (four pairs of males and females, traditionally) in each square; at a dance there may be many squares. Generally speaking, each of these squares dances independently of each other, with the exception of specialty or "gimmick" dances, where there might be some crossover of dancers from one square to another. While traditional square dance uses live music, modern western square dancing is usually played from recordings.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Modern Western square dance”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

Modern Western square dance is one of two American types of square dancing, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶