Country dances popular in Georgian England and colonial America were simplier alternatives to court dances, Shields explains. Formal court dance required learning and practice. Country dances have simple steps, and dancers move in geometric patterns. Hence, the terms circle dance or square dance. Country dances tell you something about 18th-century country culture.
Modern dances are for couples.
Country dances force you to mix up. To Edith Mroz, Delaware '72M, '88Ph. D., English country dances are as vital today as they were to 18th-century people. New music is being composed today for dancing, she says. Mroz, a musician, and her husband, Winfried, founded the Dover English Country Dancers in 1979 after learning the dances at a music camp near Plymouth, Mass., sponsored by the Country Dance and Song Society of America.