A Reluctant Line Dancer

It took three long years before I relented. I relented not because I was convinced, but because I ran out of arguments. Resistance was futile. And so, at the ripe age of 58, I - a confirmed non-dancer - consented to line dancing. That was over a decade ago!

Three years earlier, my wife had joined a local line dance group as a newbie. She fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Ever since, she had been working on me – gently but persistently.

If dancers live on Venus, I was born on Mars.

Harrison Ford had it easy. He could get off the hook in Clear and Present Danger by simply saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t dance.” That option was not open to me.

I searched for reasons why I shouldn’t line dance. Back then I hadn’t yet, in preparation for line dancing, bought my cowboy hat and western boots. So instead, I put on the only hat I have always worn – my rational hat.

Bad idea.

As we grow older, we are told to switch to physical activities that are low impact. Line dancing? Check.

One of the greatest dangers in old age is losing balance and falling. “Go line dancing”, said my hat. “You’ll improve your balance by hopping, jumping, and turning.”

Want to remain socially active? You got it. “You’ll be part of a group of like-minded enthusiasts.”

Maintain your sharp brain? “Go line dancing”, said the sign at the end of the cul-de-sac. Every dance is individually choreographed; and you must memorize them.

So, there I was. Every alley I took turned out to be a dead end. The only one left led straight to the local YMCA.

So, one fine evening, I marched off to the YMCA and joined a line dancing class for beginners. The rest is history. This time, it was I who got hooked.

The group of mostly elderly, health-conscious folks welcomed me warmly. And the teacher, Miriam, was a godsend. She had an amazing knack for teaching the uninitiated. She, if I may say so, was the perfect “Minnesota Cowgirl”, if you can imagine one. Besides line dancing, her other hobby was riding and caring for her two horses.

My initial shyness and awkwardness soon gave way to fun – thanks also to friendly fellow dancers. And to everyone’s surprise, but nowhere near my own, I turned out to be a quick learner. In hindsight, I attribute this to my subconsciously approaching the whole thing as learning a new language. More on this later.

But part of the reason I got hooked was my realization of what line dancing really is.

Until then, I thought you line dance in a cowboy outfit. I had already assembled my paraphernalia. Not so. I never used my impressive outfit for dancing.

My vague idea of line dancing was somewhat like standing erect on the dance floor with your thumbs tucked under the belt and stomping as the music goes. And every now and then throwing out a hearty “Yee-haw!” for good measure.

Not so either. I discovered, to my surprise, that line dancing actually involves … dancing!

Yes, the caricatured “Yee-haw!” kind does exist. It is danced to country western music and is quite popular. But line dancing is a broad genre. There is the crossover type - danced to a variety of contemporary pop, rock, oldies, and mainstream music. And then there is Latin line dance influenced by Latin rhythms.

This, too, is line dancing (embedded video).

Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to “graduate” from YMCA. Together with my wife, I joined a local line dance group. That’s where things got more interesting.

Here, the crowd was different. More of younger dancers, but also some elderly. Among the elderly, some were even in their early 80s. But on the dance floor, they left me in the dust!

More importantly, the variety of dances was much broader. And we learned more difficult ones.

The once reluctant line dancer doing “It’s America” shortly after graduating from YMCA (embedded video)

That’s when a riddle reappeared in my mind that had been bugging me for some time. How is it possible to learn hundreds of dances, each choreographed individually and lasting three to five minutes?

The answer, I realized suddenly, was language.

Every dance is poetry in motion – written in the language of dance. Let me explain.

A dance is not merely a sequence of steps. It is closer to a poem. The individual moves matter, just as individual words matter. But what we experience is the larger pattern - rhythm, repetition, surprise, flow, and expression.

The basic moves of line dancing (steps, step-touches, kicks, turns, toe touches, heel digs, and so on) are the letters of the language. Shuffles, jazz boxes, Grapevine, etc. are the sequences – equivalent to words in a spoken language. A series of sequences make up sections, just as words make up sentences. And several sections together form larger blocks of choreography – the closest thing dance has to stanzas.

When memorizing a poem, you don’t memorize the individual letters. You go by remembering familiar and notable phrases while remaining aware of the cadence, rhythm, and emotion.

And in line dancing? A grapevine here. A shuffle there. A turn that naturally follows. What had once looked impossibly complicated from the outside suddenly felt manageable.

And there was something else. In a well-choreographed dance, the movements seem to emerge naturally from the music itself. The dance becomes an expression of the music, much as a poem is an expression of the poet. Another reason to think of dance as poetry in motion.

Take all this with a pinch of salt though. I am no expert – not in poetry, and certainly not in dance. But thinking this way helped me understand why line dancing is easier to learn than I had imagined.

Then there was a second discovery. It was even more surprising than the language discovery. It was the discovery of playfulness.

Have you watched children play? They hop, they jump, they skip and move in silly ways – and they enjoy themselves.

Perhaps this is what the body wants – to release tension and feel good. But as we grow older, social norms get in the way.

On the dance floor, though, you can hop, jump, and turn - even wiggle your butt - with no shame. You can’t do that in a grocery shop. On the dance floor however, that’s what the choreography prescribes, and that’s what everyone else is doing.

Now you have the permission to get in touch with your inner child. Not a simple thing to do anywhere else, especially for a highly rational scientist and a male of age!

Looking back, I realize that my wife was right – as usual. And I’m so glad that my resistance was futile.

As a result, I learned a new language, one spoken not with words but with movement. And hidden inside that language was something I hadn’t expected to find at all: permission to play.

Postscript for Rationalists

Read this only if you are more rational than I am – if that‘s even possible. You should start dancing for one simple reason. It’s the science.

Researchers have shown that dancing improves balance, mobility, cognition, and healthy aging throughout life. Apparently, hopping around to music is better for us than it looks.

But if, for some strange reason, dancing still isn’t your thing (maybe not so strange – after all it took many decades for a smart guy like me to do so), then perhaps, eat plenty of curry.

Turmeric, the yellow spice that gives many curries their color, has long been studied for possible protective effects on the brain.

Although I can’t imagine anybody disliking both line dancing and eating curry, there is still hope. Become bilingual.

Which leaves me wondering about the prospects for a curry-loving, trilingual line dancer. That individual happens to be me.

Then again, every statistic has its outliers.

• New to this publication? Read here what it is all about: WELCOME to Outsights of a Conspecific

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