Partner Dancing

• A variety of couples dances from Europe, including the polka, waltz and mazurka, were danced in the Wild West, but they were adapted to fit American-style music. Fast fiddles typified the music of the Wild West, which was heavily influenced by Irish and Scottish immigrants. Dance steps also tended to be more rough and exaggerated than their European counterparts, due in part to the fact that many of the dancers wore heavy boots, made for working long hours outside.
  
  

Bordellos

• Many of the Wild West frontier towns were short on women, as the men usually came first to do the settling and prospecting and later would send for their wives and family from the larger East Coast cities. Much of the music and dance styles that developed in the Wild West developed in bordellos, where men would spend the money they earned building railroads, mining for gold or building houses. It was not uncommon for men to dance with each other -- in fact, sometimes they would "heifer brand" a male, by tying a scarf around his arm to indicate that he was to play the female part.
  
  

The Military

• The various military forts that dotted the Wild West had a profound influence on the formation of dancing styles. Dancing was an essential skill taught to officers in academies like West Point, and even small frontier forts had dance balls on a regular basis.
  
  

Group Dancing

• Circle dances, which came from Celtic settlers of the New World and other group folkloric traditions, also became part of the dance repertoire of the Wild West. Since different steps were influencing dancing from many different places, often times a dance leader would stand before the group calling out moves and demonstrating them. This led to the creation of what is now known as sqaure dancing.
  
  

Dance Floors

• Dance floors in the wild west were often crude and rough, made out of raw wooden planks and heavy nails. This made the subtle steps used on smooth polished dance floors, like the ones in Europe and eastern big cities, obselete. Dancers used bigger steps and higher leg lifts, a characteristic that still is common among many country style dances.