I caught the line dancing bug, and it’s only a matter of time before you do, too. On a recent evening in Philipsburg, Montana after a drawn-out big sky sunset, I stepped inside the wood barn at The Ranch at Rock Creek, following the twang of a convivial country tune. “We’re the biggest nobodies in Montana,” the lead singer quipped before his band began their set. A group of girls descended upon the dance floor, swaying across the room in unison. They were line dancing, of course, and it took very little time for me—the tenderfoot—to join in.
In the recent past, line dancing has undergone an astonishing revival that has gained traction both online (TikTok made it a “new favorite hobby”) and in real life, with country bars that offer line dancing nights opening up all across the country. Earlier in 2024, the documentary short Stud Country (directed by Alexandra Kern and Lina Abascal) debuted, painting a striking portrait of L.A.’s history of queer country and western line dancing. Pile all of that on top of the Yellowstone craze, Beyoncé’s glam cowgirl era, fashion collaborations with the likes of Orville Peck, Pharrell’s exploration of the Black cowboy for Louis Vuitton’s fall 2024 menswear collection, and Bella Hadid’s decamp to the Lone Star State, and the message becomes crystal clear: there’s never been a better time to slip into a pair of cowboy boots.
The origin story of line dancing, like any other kind of creative expression, is layered. Cultural influences ranging from European folk dances to African-American movements and patterns had a hand in shaping Western line dancing as we know it today. For award-winning music journalist and historian, Robert K. Oermann, the earliest Western group dance he can remember bears a familiar tune.
You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in, and you shake it all about, you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about. “I think it dates back to the 19th century,” he tells me over the phone from his home in Nashville. From there, this kind of group dance experienced a steady progression—a square dancing “craze” in the post-war 1940s, the bunny hop and hand jive in the ’50s, the twist of the ’60s, disco in the 1970s, the electric slide popularized by Marcia Griffiths circa 1980s, and the “Macarena” and “Cha-Cha Slide” in the decades following.
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