Boots, beats and back issues: My line dancing comeback

I decided I wanted to learn to line dance while sitting on a hay bale at the side of a buzzing dance floor at a country music festival last summer. All my friends were up and dancing, cowboy boots on, checked shirts tied, grapevines perfectly in sync. I was trying to make sense of the steps, thinking, next song I’ll try it, never quite finding the nerve to get up and join them.

I don’t like sitting on the sidelines, especially since I herniated a disc in my back last spring. If I’m moving, the pain goes. Sit or stand for too long and it builds. Gentle movement keeps the hip and back muscles nicely lubricated without putting them under too much strain. And could there be a gentler form of movement than line dancing? A few months after the lonesome hay bale experience, I head to a local line dancing night to find out.

Boots & Bourbon Line Dancing is held every Thursday night at the Crystal Ballroom in Glossop. I pay my £5 at the door, head to the bar and down a Jack Daniel’s & ginger (all the cowboys drink them) for courage. I find a spot at the back of the packed room, thinking it’ll be the safest place to flounder.

Bad move. What you soon learn about line dancing is that the room turns around on itself. One minute you’re safe at the back then everyone swivels 180 degrees and suddenly you’re in the front row, centre-stage, and there’s no-one ahead of you to copy the steps from.

That first night was bewildering but you expect that at any new activity – and there were a few joyous moments where I did the right steps at the right time, rather than two seconds behind everyone else and in the wrong direction.

“We always start and end on an easy one so that everyone can get up dancing and have a go,” one of the night’s founders, Laura, tells me later.

“It’s a type of dance where you don’t need any experience to do it,” she says. “You don’t need any flexibility. That’s why it’s accessible. Old, young, everyone can do it really. You just need to know your right from left.”

About that . . . I’ve never instinctively known my right from left. I’ve left many a driving instructor and boxing coach in despair at my lack of mind-to-body awareness. I can think or I can move but I’m not doing both at the same time – it’s asking too much. With that in mind, I decide I’ll benefit from a slower approach to learning to line-dance and head to an ‘Absolute Beginner’s’ class from Stardust Dance Centre, which takes place every Monday evening at Glossopdale School.

Here the teacher, Kirstie, slowly breaks the dances down, K-step by K-step, repeating each strut-walk and hip-swing and jazz-box until we’ve all got the hang of it, or thereabouts.

The Absolute Beginners class and the faster-paced Improvers class (held at the same time in the studio above) were set up by Paula Graves, a professional dancer who won the Line Dancing World Championship in 2001 with her American partner Bob Bahrs. Paula began teaching line dancing during the 1990s then came back to it recently when country music got big again thanks to viral TikTok dances and heavy airplay on Radio 2.

She says line-dancing is huge worldwide, and surprisingly, has a particularly strong base in Asia where a big part of its appeal is that you don’t need a partner. In conservative cultures, it’s liberating to be able to dance solo and judgment-free.

Paula says, “When you come to a dance class, you switch off completely from anything that you’re thinking about because you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. And people find it such a relief. The hour goes by so quickly and whatever problems you’ve had going into the class, when you come out, they seem less important.”

It’s one of the reasons I look forward to the classes; the enforced break from the mental chatter. It’s a physical workout on a par with a brisk walk and adds up to about 4,000 steps per hour. But it’s the mental workout that I find most challenging. As a perimenopausal woman, I have regular moments of brain fog and broken concentration. I see line dancing as a way of breaking through that and reminding myself that I can still be sharp and focused when I need to.

After a few months of going to both sessions – Boots & Bourbon and the Stardust Absolute Beginner’s class, I’m getting to grips with some of the sequences and steps. I’ve got a couple of favourite dances almost in the bag – ‘Honky Tonk Highway’, ‘Strummingbird’, ‘Cowboy Charleston’. I know what comes next – and sometimes I actually do it in time with the music. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my arms yet but they’ll get there.

In the meantime, I want somewhere to show off my new lower body moves – and as festival season is still a while off – I search for line dancing nights in Manchester. Most classes and regular nights are outside the city centre – such as Shimmy Shakers in Haigh near Wigan, or CJ’s Country Music Club in Denton, or Just For Kicks Line-Dancing in Sale. But I see that Aviva Studios has an afternoon event coming up from Red Rodeo Club that looks interesting. I contact one of the organisers to find out more about it.

Cloe Gregson set up Red Rodeo Club, an LGBTQ+ line dancing night, after being inspired by watching line dancing groups like Manchester Prairie Dogs at Pride.

“There was something so joyful and communal about it, and it always pulled people in,” Cloe says. “I wanted to honour that – the roots of line dancing and the communities that have kept it alive but give it a new spin. Bringing it into a club setting, mixing in pop and queer culture, and opening it up to a wider, more mixed crowd.

“People are looking for nights out where they can actually do something, not just stand and watch,” she says. “Line dancing gives you that straight away. Within a few minutes, you’ve got a whole room moving together, which is quite a special thing.

“For me, it’s that moment when everyone’s locked into the same routine, singing along, and it just clicks. It stops being about learning steps and becomes a proper dancefloor moment.”

The regular Red Rodeo Club night takes place monthly at Fairfield Social Club. And there’s a free, one-off event coming up at Aviva Studios on 25 April: Street Symphony X Red Rodeo Club.

Led by transfemme Indian rapper and producer Shanika Sunrise, with a soundtrack from DJ Klitbait and hosting from performance artist Violet Blonde, it’s not your average line dancing session. If the Red Rodeo Club nights are anything to go by, it’ll be popular, so get a ticket while you can. You can’t stay sitting on a hay bale forever. There’s dancing to be done.