Line Dance Lessons

Line Dancing

Line dance lessons can be a fun and social way to learn this popular dance form. Find them not only in country-western bars but also everywhere from high schools to weddings. Line dancing has spread across the world.

Breaking It Down

Line dancing is a set of moves performed by people standing in rows, usually in unison and usually to a country music song. Since most country songs follow a set pattern of verse and a repeated chorus, the dance moves also tend to have repeated sections with minor variations.

Most line dance lessons capitalize on this by teaching the basic choreographic theme at the beginning of the class. This is usually a movement phrase measured in counts of 8 and something repeated during the dance at easily identifiable musical cues (such as the chorus). Teaching this first guarantees there will be a part of the dance that people can come back to if they get lost in the other moves during the dance. Of course, that's a worse-case scenario; more often it provides a baseline for people to come back to after they've done variations or ornamentations to the other parts of the dance. Watching dancers do solos and then seamlessly integrate back into a unison dance theme during the chorus of a song is part of the magic of line dance.

Sometimes, there are specific moves taught during lessons for line dancing in order to build a movement vocabulary specific to the song. The more line dance classes you take, the stronger your vocabulary becomes, the quicker you'll pick up the basics and be ready to either embellish the moves or learn the more complicated line dances. For example, it doesn't take long to learn the grapevine move: Placing weight on each foot as it moves, the dancers move their right foot to the right, left foot in front of it, right foot to the side again, left foot crosses in back, repeat as needed.

The grapevine is simple enough to learn that a few sentences suffice. However, changing that to a climbing grapevine might take hands-on instruction in person, with someone demonstrating the way the legs need to "leap" over each other. Grapevines are very common moves in line dances; climbing grapevines are not exactly common, but they can be a powerful part of a line dance. So where do you learn how to do this fancy move?

Where to Get Line Dance Lessons

Because it's so popular, there are many different ways to learn line dancing. Some are so easy they don't require even leaving your home. However, since this is a social dance, you'd be missing out on the experience if you choose not to use the number one way of learning to line dance:

  1. Go Line Dancing! Because line dances are always being created along with new songs, even the experienced people at a country western dance hall wouldn't know all the new steps in the right order. That's why most line dance nights start with lessons earlier in the evening - sometimes for a small fee to compensate the instructor, sometimes for free. The dances taught are usually first a common dance for newcomers to learn, and then a more complex or new dance for everyone to show off later in the evening.
  2. Check Your Local Dance Studio: Along with ballet, jazz, and tap, it's possible that your local dance studio also teaches line dancing. These kinds of lessons usually focus on the specific moves (such as the grapevine) so you have the ability to quickly and easily pick up new dances. They will also teach you popular favorites like the Boot Scootin' Boogie.
  3. Go Online: Between YouTube and Google, you can find a wealth of line dancing resources on the web, including step sheets for thousands of dances and videos on YouTube that can show you all the steps. However, you lose the benefit of an in-person instructor and also of socializing with other dancers. If you use this method, make sure you follow it up with a trip to the dance hall to show off your stuff!

Enjoying the Dance

Regardless of how and where you learn some line dancing, be sure to request some line dances when you go to weddings, or jump in and join the other dancers when out at a bar. Don't forget the goal here is to have fun!