Square dancers are trying to get more Chicagoans to do-si-do

It’s a Thursday night, and a disco beat is pumping over a sound speaker at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Andersonville. More than 45 people of all ages have come to learn how to square dance.

“OK, everybody join hands. Circle left,” says Barry Clasper, who has been dancing and leading square dances for more than 50 years. Tonight, he’s leading a dance for the Chi-Town Squares, a club of primarily LGBTQ+ people.

“Was that so hard?” he asks the crowd, which is dressed in a mix of plaid and bolo ties to comfortable shoes and gym shorts. “Listen to the music. Try and take one step for each beat.”

Square dancing might be thought of as your grandma’s dance — and that’s because square dancing was really popular during your grandma’s prime. But it’s still around today in the Chicago area. Now, local clubs are trying to bring the hobby back into the mainstream by making it easier for newcomers to join in and by training new callers — the person who shouts out the instructions for dancers. Plus, they’re emphasizing the dance’s social benefits.

“Square dancing is important because it’s a really strong social network, which you don’t find with other types of dances,” said Janice Cha, president of the Illinois square dancing association.

She says with line dancing or ballroom, “if you mess up, it’s on you and nobody else is affected. With square dance, it’s so much of a team effort that you’re working together. It creates a bond that you don’t find in many other dance communities.”

‘Like a team sport for eight people all set to music’

There once were over 100 social square dancing clubs in the Chicago area; now there are about 20. To understand how popular the dance was at its peak — and what today’s clubs are facing to bring it back — you first need to understand square dancing basics.

Visualize this: Four couples stand together, each making one side of a square and facing toward the center. The caller then yells out a string of different figures (known as calls), which the dancers respond to in real time. The most advanced dancers know more than 1,000 calls.

“There’s a real high of being in a square of four couples and you’re all moving together, and the caller throws out an unexpected call that might be a little bit of a challenge. And by God, we got that! And we got through it!” said David Millstone, who runs an online archive called the Square Dance History Project. “It’s like a team sport for eight people all set to music.”

Square dancing’s boom started in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, after a man named Lloyd Shaw began traveling across the U.S. teaching and promoting square dancing.

“Recreation departments around the country would offer classes. People would be lined up around the block waiting to register to join in,” Millstone said. “It was part of America, the American fabric. It was hard to grow up in America at that time and not be aware of square dancing.”

Square dancing clubs had strict rules. You often couldn’t show up alone — you had to bring a partner of a different gender. Matching Western clothing was encouraged, and women had to wear special swirly skirts.

In Chicago, you could find square dances throughout the week. Paul Collins, a sought-after caller for square dancing and folk dancing, remembers learning to dance in the 1950s by watching his parents. His family was a regular at a Black-owned square dancing club called Robert’s Barn, located in a three-flat in Grand Crossing.

“[Sam Roberts] just took his basement and turned it into a square dance center,” Collins said. “Imagine on a Saturday night and 64 people crowding into a basement to do square dancing.”

Major newspapers had square dancing columns, and there were both national and regional magazines about the topic too. When the Square Dance Center opened in Arlington Heights in 1966, it made headlines. It boasted “a rubber-based, hardwood floor, perfect acoustics and parking for 150 cars.”

The social aspect of being organized into clubs was important for the activity’s success, Millstone said: “It just became a focus of people’s lives.”

A big change came to the hobby in 1974. That’s when a national group called the CALLERLAB standardized square dancing moves so that anyone could square dance anywhere. This approach became known as “Modern” or “Modern/Western” square dancing — and it’s what most clubs do today.

Not just your grandma’s hobby

Square dancing’s popularity continued until the late ’80s, and it’s hard to pinpoint one reason for the decline. But while modern square dancing makes the hobby universal, it also means newcomers are expected to take lessons, so they know the moves before dancing with a big group.

“I would say that the culture in square dancing was that we’ve always done it this way. We don’t need to change anything. And that worked fine when square dance was booming,” said Cha, who in the 2010s began noticing a steep decline.

“Every year, more and more [clubs] would just go dark. They would wink out of existence; because people aged out, they stopped holding lessons,” she said. “Without new callers, you can’t have lessons, and without lessons, your club is going to die.”

That’s why, in 2017, Cha and some other square dancers raised money to host a “caller school” in Chicago. Many callers who learned there are still leading area dances today. Clubs have shifted to teaching Social Square Dancing — an easier form of dancing that only has about 50 calls to learn.

“What keeps me going is that magic point in learning when new dancers master the moves — their faces light up,” Cha said.

On a local level, some clubs are trying to bring in new members by hosting free parties. It may be working: Back at Chi-Town Squares’ intro party, Paul Neuman laughs as he works with the other dancers to complete the most complicated move of the night. This is the third party he’s attended with the club.

“The first night I tried it, I loved it. I was hooked,” Neuman says.

Now, he’s decided to sign up for lessons through January. “Every time I leave a lesson, I feel really energized, just over the moon,” he says. “Like, I can’t stop smiling. It’s really fun.”