Since the advent of music, people have invented dance steps for pairs or groups of dancers. With a few basic moves you can join the crowd of dancers who are having fun on the dance floor. Line dance, a choreographed array of simple repeated dance steps, is practiced all around the world.
In line dance, dancers of all ages and genders are aligned in a single row or multiple rows, facing either single direction or toward closest row. A routine may require dancers to switch “wall”, which means to switch the direction they are facing toward.
Line dances can be separated into different categories depending on how many walls they use in their dancing sequence. There are one-wall dances, two-wall dances, and four-wall dances. Although dancers can often stop and perform dancing moves while facing half-way between main wall positions.
In North America, line dance is practiced by the fans of country-western music, but it can be danced with many other music styles such as rock & roll, Latin music, jazz, rhythm and blues, swing and disco.
The history of the modern line dance starts during the 1950s when the popular ”Madison” dance became widespread across the United States, continuing with the arrival of the “San Francisco Stomp” in 1961. Country-western influence arrived during the 1970s with five distinct line dances being used, most famously “Cowboy Boogie” and “Walkin’ Wazi”. The popularity of line dances exploded overnight with the arrival of Hollywood musical “Saturday Night Fever” in 1977 which gave line dance disco dancing style. Popular dances of the 2nd half of 1970s decade were “Tush Push”, “Electric Slide” (danced only to the song “Electric Boogie” from Marcia Griffiths), “L.A. Hustle”, “Buss Stop” and “Nutbush” (highly popular US and Australian line dance, danced only to the Tina Turner’s song “Nutbush City Limits”).
The 1980s saw the rise of line dance routines (several of them created by tweaking previous disco routines) made for the wide variety of country songs. This was mostly fueled by the success of a 1980 film “Urban Cowboy” (starring John Travolta and Debra Winger) that popularized country culture in a way that it was appealing to general audiences.
New line dances from the early 1990s were created to be danced to numerous country-western songs, and the biggest wave of them came after the release of 1992 hit song “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus which popularized country-western song genre all around the world. Other popular dances from that decade were ”Swamp Thang”, “5,6,7,8”, “Khaki Country”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and most famously “Macarena”.
Line dance gives people of all ages the opportunity to dance, even without having a partner, making it very popular at weddings, large gatherings, and flash mobs. There are new songs and line dances introduced all the time.
If you want have a great time and learn a few line dances, be sure to register for Poolesville Seniors’ Pig Roast and Line Dancing at Linden Farm Gothic Barn on October 15th from 6:00 – 10:00 p.m.