How do you square dance?

Question:

How do you square dance?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Being from the Ozarks, we were taught Square Dance in physical education class in elementary school.

It's similar to old English country dances but a lot of the terminology is poorly-pronounced French and German -- probably others! I figure it's a mixture of the folk dances from settlers from the "Old Country" here.

What happens is there is music. Growing up, we had records that were played. If you have live music, that's better but a recording of non-lyrical music is okay. The most important part of square dance is the caller. The caller stands with the band or near the music source and calls out what steps to dance.

"Allemand Left" is a step as is "do-si-do." There are many steps to call and basically, the dancers are paired: 4 sides with 2 people on each, facing inward (as if standing on lines of an imaginary square). The couples often are separated to do the steps and sometimes switch partners to do a particular step and then return to their original partner.

It's really something to watch and do -- takes a lot of learning. Professional square-dancers often incorporate a kind of high-stepping (think "Lord of the Dance" or "Riverdance") so that they're kind of bouncing when not performing a called step.