About Tech Squares

Tech Squares is the square and round dance club of MIT, founded in 1967.  Tech Squares dances modern Western square dancing to a professional caller (Ted Lizotte), and round dancing to a professional cuer (Phil Gatchell).  We dance the Plus program, with two squares alternating with two round dances.  We meet every Tuesday 8-10:30pm and sponsor other events as well.  Our dances are open to the public.  We do not have a dress code, so please dress comfortably, knowing that you may be dancing at an accelerated pace!  Tech Squares is a singles club.

For the non-dancer, we offer a 13-week beginners' class in square dancing every term, starting in September and February.

To get an up-to-date summary of current events, see our home page or call our recorded information line, 617-253-7000.  You may also leave a phone message there.

Electronic mail: squaresmit.edu

Via WWW: http://www.mit.edu/~tech-squares/

U.S. mail:

	Tech Squares
	MIT Room W20-437
	77 Massachusetts Ave
	Cambridge MA 02139-4307

Site Awards

The Tech Squares Web site was the first winner of the Site of the Month award given by the Northeast Square Dancer Magazine.

Tech Squares in the Press

Spectrum

MIT's Spectrum newsletter did an article about Tech Squares in their Summer 2003 issue.  While the club is pleased by the media exposure, this piece does not present Tech Squares accurately.

Newsweek

In 1994, Newsweek's then-new Cyberscope Trends feature listed Tech Squares as one of the spots where Techies get F2F time.  Must be willing to do-si-do, they noted.

Newsweek, September 5, 1994, p. 10.

Rolling Stone

Tech Squares isn't mentioned by name here, but MIT does have several challenge dance groups, and they grew out of Tech Squares.  The caller and founder of Stanford's club are both Tech Squares alums.

Hot Geek Scene: Challenge Square Dancing

Square dancing at the challenge level is more like a fast-moving game of chess than a hoedown.  The attire is running shoes and shorts; the locale is typically urban (with lively scenes near high-tech academic centers like Stanford and MIT); the music could be anything from Broadway to techno; and the aim is to perform mind-bogglingly complex maneuvers on cue, following the rapid-fire instructions of the designated caller.  When nobody's screwing up, the choreography can mesmerize - like a Rubik's Cube in graceful motion.  Challenge dancing is square dancing taken to its puzzle-solving extreme, wrote longtime caller Lynette Bellini on her Web page (www.lynette.org/chaldance.html).  She recommends the activity to anyone with a bent for algorithmic thinking and problem solving, and notes that about 75 to 80 percent of challenge dancers have high-tech backgrounds.  Not that everyone who challenge-dances crunches algorithms for a living, of course.  But then, not everyone who discoed in the '70s was a gay man, nor was every '80s break dancer an inner-city teen.

By Julian Dibbell from Rolling Stone, August 21, 1997, p. 76.  Copyright © 1997 by Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted by permission.

Up the Infinite Corridor

Fred Hapgood dropped by a challenge square dancing group at MIT.  He wrote about what he saw in his 1993 book Up the Infinite Corridor.  (This excerpt is long enough to get its own Web page.)

Learn about our beginners' class.