"The chief trouble, as I said, with the Virginia Reel is the monotonous repetition and waiting for your turn on the corners. This can be obviated by a new form of the dance which is gradually growing in favor. In this form, instead of having corners bow, turn, etc., each gentleman, and all at once, crosses directly over and does all the moves with his own partner. Done carelessly, this leads to wild confusion (but fun). However, if the line of men all advance as a straight line, the ladies the same, and all return to places in straight lines it can be very effective. And everyone is active all the time up to the point when the head couple reels the set."
-- Lloyd Shaw, in Cowboy Dances: A Collection of Western Square Dances (1939)
It's unclear among whom, exactly, this version was "gradually growing in favor", since one page earlier Shaw had also noted that he had "never seen it with the country folk. It has strangely survived in schools and in society groups..." Shaw's mention is the earliest reference I have to this "all-active" (for the opening figures, anyway) version of the Virginia Reel. The earliest descriptions I have are from somewhat later, though I wouldn't want to make any promises about these being the earliest; my collection of mid-twentieth century dance books is fairly thin. But by the 1950s, this style of dancing the Virginia Reel seems to have become well-established.
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