The Fiddle Went Electric
Last month I walked into a community center in Tucson expecting banjos and gingham. Instead, a DJ was spinning a remix of Dua Lipa while sixty people do-si-do'd in sneakers. The caller — a 24-year-old with tattoo sleeves — shouted instructions over a bass drop. I stood in the doorway for a full minute before anyone noticed me.
That's square dancing in 2024. Not your grandmother's version, unless your grandmother was exceptionally cool.
What Actually Changed
The music shift is the obvious one, and yeah, it matters. Clubs in Austin, Brooklyn, and Melbourne have ditched the fiddle-only playlists. You'll hear Lizzo, you'll hear K-pop, you'll hear house music that makes the floor vibrate. One caller in Portland told me she builds her sets like a DJ would — opening with something familiar, building energy, dropping a surprise track that makes people laugh before they start moving again.
But here's the thing nobody talks about: the choreography got simpler, and that's not a downgrade. Traditional square dancing has levels — Mainstream, Plus, Advanced, Challenge — and getting through them can take years. Modern clubs cut that barrier. You walk in, you learn ten calls, you're dancing within the hour. Purists hate this. I get it. But I've also watched beginners leave traditional clubs after one session because they felt stupid. So.
The Global Mashup Nobody Expected
I have a friend — I'll call her Priya — who grew up doing Bollywood choreography in Melbourne. She started square dancing because her neighbor dragged her along. Now she's incorporated bhangra footwork into her calls. The other dancers love it. The traditional callers don't know what to do with her.
This is happening everywhere. Latin clubs are adding swing elements. Japanese square dance groups are performing at festivals with taiko drums. It's messy. It doesn't always work. But when it does — when a caller cues "allemande left" and the music shifts to cumbia — there's this electric moment where everyone in the room grins.
Is it still square dancing? I genuinely don't know. I'm not sure it matters.
The App Thing
Look, I'm going to be honest: I don't love that square dancing has an app now. There's something about learning choreography from a screen that feels off to me. The whole point of a caller is that human voice guiding you through chaos.
But I'm also 38 and cranky about technology in general. The apps work. People use them. A guy in Seattle told me he practiced for three months on an app before ever showing up to a live dance, and when he finally did, he kept up with experienced dancers on his first night. That's not nothing.
Virtual sessions took off during COVID and never fully went away. Rural clubs that couldn't attract callers now book them remotely. The technology isn't replacing the community — it's expanding the pool of people who can access it.
What I Actually Care About
Here's where I get sentimental. The best square dance I ever attended was a fundraiser in rural Oregon. Forty people, half of them over 60, the other half college students from the nearby town. The caller was 70 and called exclusively to bluegrass. The music was old. The moves were traditional. And it was the most joyful room I've been in for years.
Modernization is fine. Necessary, even. But the thing that makes square dancing special isn't the music or the choreography or the apps. It's the fact that you have to look eight other people in the eye and cooperate. You can't square dance alone. You can't square dance while scrolling your phone. You have to be present with strangers.
That's rare now. Rarer than people realize.
So What
Square dancing isn't having a comeback — that framing implies it left. It didn't. It just moved to smaller rooms while the rest of us weren't paying attention. Now it's back in bigger rooms, with better sound systems and more diverse faces, and sometimes the music is terrible and sometimes it's transcendent.
Go try it. Bring someone who thinks they hate it. That's usually the person who ends up loving it most.
