A Brief History of Calls
The rearrangement of CALLERLAB's lists of calls in 2026 has made me wonder about the history of the calls, and the history of Western Square Dancing more generally. I have wondered when calls were invented, and discovered that Vic Ceder's website can often give an answer to that question. For a more general history of what calls were throught to be important at a given time I found the magazine Sets in Order to be invaluable.
Between 1948 and 1953 Western Square Dancing underwent a remarkable change. In 1949 the magazine Sets in Order was still publishing dances like those by Lloyd Shaw in Cowboy Dances, 1939. In these the call of each dance was an atomic unit, not easily decomposed into parts, nor was there much comonality between dances, if you knew the call for one dance it did not help you understand another. It was as if every dance were written in a different language. But by 1951 the dances published in Sets in Order were composed of standardized units (which we would now name "calls", but were then named "fundamentals".
This may have been helped by contact with New England Square Dancing which did have a language, which it inherited from Quadrilles. If you look at Square Dance books from the 1920s and 1930s you will find that those from the East have glossaries describing their languages (see Henry Ford's Good Morning, 1926 or Ralph Page's The Country Dance Book, 1937), while those from the west or south (see Lloyd Shaw's Cowboy Dances, 1939) did not.
This change appears to have been instigated and spearheaded by the editor of Sets in Order, Bob Osgood. He points out the difficulties dancers had in moving from one part of the country to another and argued for standardization of dances, and as time went on, of standardization of fundamentals.
Sets in Order started publishing in 1948 with the subtitle of The California magazine of Western Square and Round Dancing in July of 1949 this was shortened to The Magazine of Western Square Dancing, in June 1951 it became The Magazine of Square Dancing, in July 1958 The Official Magazine of Square Dancing and on January 1970 it became simply Square Dancing. The change in names reflects the change in how the magazine viewed itself as it became the center of Square Dance innovation.
As time went on the number of these fundamental building blocks increased, until, in 1968, Bob Osgood started another change to limit this growth and to produce a national standard for square dancing.
In 1970 Bill Burleson started his Square Dancer's Encyclopedia, which contained all the calls he had ever heard of and continued to be updated with new calls until at least 2003.
| 1949 | 1951 | 1953 | 1955 | 1957 | 1963 | 1968 | Burleson 1970 |
Burleson 2003 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fundamentals | 25 | 28 | 43 | 84 | ~110 | 279+ | 800+ | 919 | 5125 |
| Dances | 75 | ||||||||
| Breaks | 15 | ||||||||
| Do-si-does | 5 | ||||||||
| Basic Figures | 30 | 50 |
The standardized list of fundamentals from 1951 was acompanied by a list of dances that people were expected to know, a list of standard breaks (that is the bits that come before, in the middle of, or at the end of a square dance), and a set of standard do-si-does. This last concept is now lost, it has almost nothing to do with the standard back to back we all know, but in the southern appalachians the do-si-do figure was integral to the dance, and every valley seemed to have a different figure. The only remnant we have left of this concept is the Do Paso figure (which is the way do-si-do was danced in El Paso in about 1940.
Starting in 1963 some figures started to be designated as basics.
Sources
| 1939 | Lloyd Shaw's Cowboy Dances Shaw only defines about three figures: Docey-doe, Right and Left Through, and Ladies' Chain, and he describes many dances. |
| 1949 | The September, 1949 issue of Sets in Order published an initial attempt to standardize fundamentals, suggesting that if any callers in Southern California used those terms they should use them in the sense described. Some of these fundamentals were useful concepts like "Partner", but most were what we'd now term "calls". |
| 1951 | The January, 1951 issue of Sets in Order published the report of Southern California Standardization Committee. This report lists several fundamental figures and introduces the concept of a teaching order (which calls should be taught first). It also lists a set of 75 dances which everyone should know, and says which should be taught first, and a list of introductions and breaks which should be learned. At this point they must not have felt that their "fundamental movements" could cover everything needed in a dance. |
| 1953 | Clarke Kugler's Easy Key Handbook of Square Dance Fundamentals contains 43 fundamentals (extended in 1955 to 84 figures, but I can't find a copy of that), ordered by when they should be taught. |
| 1957 | The May,
June, and
July issues of Sets in Order
contain a glossary of "The Language of Square Dancing", ~110 terms, ordered alphabetically, and
explicitly stating that these are not all part of a local standard. I have not listed all these calls, only those mentioned in other years. |
| 1963 | The March issue of Sets in Order
lists 279 square dance terms (again calling it a language), explicitly stating
that there are more terms in use. No description of the figures is given,
it's just a list. Some of the terms are marked with an '*' indicating that
they are basic figures, and followed by a number giving teaching order. I have not listed all these calls, only those labeled basic or mentioned in other years. |
| 1968 | The December, 1968, and January 1969 issues of Sets in Order publish the "Gold Ribbon Report" containing in the first "The Basic Program of American Square Dancing", and in the second "The Extended Program of American Square Dancing". These were the precursors of the Basic and Mainstream levels produced by CALLERLAB. I believe this is the first attempt at a national standard for Square Dancing. |
| 1979 | CALLERLAB's The Illustrated BASIC Movements of Square Dancing, published by Sets in Order. The initial version of CALLERLAB's Basic level. |
| 1981 | CALLERLAB's The Illustrated Mainstream and Plus I and II Movements of Square Dancing, published by Sets in Order. The initial version of CALLERLAB's Mainstream and Plus level. This also contains a list of all Basic level calls (but without descriptions) which is quite different from the list published two years previously. |
| 2020 | CALLERLAB's Social Square Dance Program |
| 2019 | CALLERLAB's website still provides the old Basic1 and Basic2 (and Advanced1) lists (as of Sept. 2026), though I don't know how long that will last. |
| 2026 | CALLERLAB's website now provides the new Mainstream and Plus lists (as of Sept. 2026). |
These lists are variously copyright © by Sets in Order and Bob Osgood, Clarke Kugler, and CALLERLAB.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 by George W. Williams V
My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.