Square dance
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A square dance is a dance for four couples, or eight dancers in total, arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, facing the middle of the square. Square dances are part of a broad spectrum of dances known by various names: country dances, traditional dances, folk dances, barn dances, ceilidh dances, contra dances, Playford dances, etc. These dances appear in over 100 different formations, of which the Square and the Longways Set are by far the most popular formations.
Modern Appalachian square dancing
A square dance in Montreal, Quebec in 1941
Quadrille variation involving five couples dancing at a Colonial Ball in the Albert Hall, Canberra September 2016 (sepia)
American-style square dancers performing outdoors in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany in 2014
Cotillion
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The cotillion is a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and North America. Originally for four couples in square formation, it was a courtly version of an English country dance, the forerunner of the quadrille and, in the United States, the square dance.
The Cotillion Dance by James Caldwall (1771)
Cotillion figures demonstrated in the Festsaal, Hofburg, Vienna, in 2008
A mid-17th century painting by Jacob Duck, called The Cotillion, is the earliest possible reference to a dance with this name.