Square Dance

Square Dance has a lot in common with Scottish Country Dance and English Country Dance, in that experience with one of these three helps you considerably with either of the others.

But they're all different.

What's most different about square dance is

Here's a video illustrating what modern square dance looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ady2ud7u5o
Note the rapidity of the calls. The dancers do not (necessarily) know what's coming next; they are following the calls, all that quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcWMp1tcn18 is a video of some people dancing at a higher level of proficiency, with lots of "styling" -- I think this video is really neat. But the former video is more typical.

One thing I find interesting about the calls is that they are very dependent on exactly where you are AND which way you are facing. Which way you end up facing at the end of a particular call is part of the definition of that call, and since most calls are in terms of whom you are facing, if you face the wrong way you misinterpret the next call.

In earlier days, for my own study I made some lists of figures, my short descriptions of them, and links to videos illustrating them. I made a list of Basic and Mainstream figures (Basic is the first level; Mainstream is the second level, and the one which you should generally achieve to be able to dance at least some of the time in most places you go), and I only ever did partial work on my list of Plus figures (the level after that, which I've also completed). I'm now working on learning "A1". Altogether the levels are Basic, Mainstream, Plus, A1, A2, C1, C2, C3. Where 'A' is for "advanced", and 'C' is for "challenge".

Square dance groups in the vicinity of Toronto are listed at http://www.td-dance.ca/Clubs/default.html
But as the above may imply, you generally have to join at the beginning of a session (e.g. September), so that you learn the calls along with everyone else and the group can progress through the season.