Category Archives: In Popular Culture
Queen Elizabeth Square Dances!
Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh dance at a square dance in their honor in Ottawa, by Governor General Viscount Alexander. (October 17, 1951)
Video: Square Dancing at the Olympics
Did you know that square dance was featured at the opening ceremony for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada?
Callers: Wilf Wiladal, Ron Refvik
Baryshnikov’s Ultimate Nightmare
I say! Baryshnikov would be lucky to be invited to a square dance!
Video: Animaniacs Square Dancing Scene
This is extremely short, but it is another example of square dance appearing in popular culture.
Video: Lady Bulldog (Hillbilly Square Dance)
Wow, this is very “meta”. It’s a cover version of the original Bugs Bunny square dance song. I kind of like it.
Smurfs Square Dance
I’d like to comment on this song, but I can’t understand any of it. I seem to have lost my internal Smurf translator when I turned 18.
Video: Texas Chain Saw Square Dance Massacre by The Fools
Some rude lyrics. Not sure if this is actually meant to be danced in some way or not. It seems a bit fast for a regular square dance.
Video: Ghetto Square Dance by Coolio
As far as I can tell, this song has nothing to do with square dancing. The Eminem song at least mentions “do-si-do”. This one has the singer giving some orders (move to the back, move to the front, move to the right), but other than that, there is no explanation for why Coolio decided to call this song “Ghetto Square Dance”.
Warning: explicit language
Video: Swing Your Partner (1943)
This cartoon gets some aspects of square dancing right (the caller, the music), but the dancers are not in squares and they don’t interact with anyone other than their partner.