Dance Classes

Come swing through the history of early American dance and learn the background and the steps to a variety of dance styles that formed the basis of American culture from the seventeenth century up to the early nineteenth century.

The first sessions will focus on the English country dance which crossed the Atlantic with early British colonial settlers; the second session will feature the French cotillon and quadrille which dominated American ballrooms from the late 1700s to the Civil War; session three will introduce the New England contra dance - a descendant of the country dance that remains alive and vibrant in many modern communities; and last, we will dance the figures of the American square dance - both in its western and New England forms - as well as some other American dance inventions of by-gone eras such as the ragtime era African-American cakewalk and the Big Apple from the 1920s.