Types of Line Dance: Every Family, and the Terms on the Step Sheet

Country-western line dance

This is the family most Americans picture. Some of its steps and terms probably came from dances that European immigrants brought to North America in the 1800s, and two notable country line dances, the Walkin’ Wazi and the Cowboy Boogie, date to 1972. Its growth is tied to country music, and two moments pushed it into the mainstream: the 1980 film Urban Cowboy, and the music video for Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” in the early 1990s (Wikipedia: Line dance). Brooks & Dunn’s 1992 cover of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” is credited with sparking renewed interest in line dancing across the United States (Wikipedia: Boot Scootin’ Boogie). Abroad, the arrival of the Country Music Television channel fed the craze in Europe (Wikipedia).

One sheet shows the country toolkit. Wikipedia credits Bill Bader with the line dance for the 1990 Asleep at the Wheel single, and his Boot Scootin’ Boogie is a 32-count, 4-wall beginner dance built from vines, heel touches with claps, heel swivels, stomps, kicks, a ball-change, a hook and hitches. On a country night these dances share the floor with couples, so it helps to know what the couples are doing: the traveling partner dance is the country two-step, and how it divides the room with the spinning partner dance is covered in two-step vs country swing.

Soul and urban line dance

Soul line dancing is “choreographed dance moves that you do in a group, without a partner,” and “the ‘soul’ part comes from the music used — like R&B, hip-hop, soul and contemporary hits,” NPR’s Maria Godoy wrote in a 2019 report. The same report describes it as popular group exercise, especially among African Americans, with classes at churches, gyms, recreation centers and senior centers, and teams with names like the Sassy Steppers.

The “Cupid Shuffle,” from Cupid’s 2007 album, spawned a popular line dance and drew comparisons to the Cha-Cha Slide (Wikipedia: Cupid Shuffle).

Call-out party dances

A call-out dance sings its own instructions. The Cha-Cha Slide began as a step-aerobics routine that DJ Casper wrote for his nephew, a fitness trainer at a Chicago gym. It was inspired by Chicago stepping, and the first version was “just a set of instructions.” It was released as a single in August 2000 (Wikipedia: Cha Cha Slide). Because the lyrics call each move, nobody has to know the dance in advance, which makes these songs easy to join at weddings and school dances.

The idea is older than it looks. In its modern form, the Hully Gully was a series of steps called out by an MC (Wikipedia: Hully Gully).

Disco and retro line dance

Line dancing predates the country boom. The Madison (1957) is among the first true line dances (Wikipedia), and the Hully-Gully (circa 1959–61) is generally credited as the first line dance to turn a quarter and repeat facing a new wall (Stanford Social Dance syllabus: Hully-Gully). The disco era added many more. The L.A. Hustle began in a small Los Angeles disco in the mid-1970s (Stanford dates it circa 1974, Wikipedia the summer of 1975), and it reached the East Coast with modified steps as the Bus Stop by spring 1976.

The Electric Slide belongs here too. Choreographer Ric Silver says he created it in 1976, a date that has been disputed (Wikipedia: Electric Slide). That disco “hustle” was a line dance, while the hustle taught in studios today is a partner dance. The split is untangled in our guide to the hustle dance.

Latin line dance

Latin line dances borrow the hip action and rhythms of Latin partner dances without the partner. Wikipedia lists “Latin (salsa suelta)” among the styles line dances have accompanied since the 1970s. The Macarena is the famous case. Its dance grew out of audience imitation at Los del Río concerts and became a worldwide craze in 1996, helped by a simplified routine that Mia Frye choreographed for the Bayside Boys remix video (Wikipedia: Macarena).

In competition, Latin-flavored line dances go into the UCWDC’s “Cuban” category: Cuban motion, with any break step on 2 or 6, as in cha-cha, mambo and rumba (UCWDC Line Dance Rules). Where those rhythms come from is mapped in types of Latin dances. If that break on 2 is new to your feet, cha-cha for beginners walks through the same check-and-replace on 2 and 3 and the chasse that follows, in a partner setting.

Celtic line dance

Celtic line dances are set to Irish and Celtic tunes. Wikipedia’s entry notes that “modern line dance” clubs mix genres, Irish among them. The Celtic Slide by Jenifer Wolf is typical: four 8-count sections of stomps, slides, a vine, two shuffles and heel splits, turning a quarter to face a new wall each time. Its sheet lists “Cry Of The Celts” from Lord of the Dance (131 BPM) as alternative music and calls it “especially good for St. Patrick’s Day parties.”

Ballroom-rhythm line dance

Choreographers including Max Perry, Jo Thompson Szymanski and Scott Blevins “began to use ballroom rhythms and technique” in line dances (Wikipedia). The result is waltz, cha-cha, West Coast Swing, nightclub and foxtrot line dances, counted the way their partner versions are. A waltz line dance counts in threes (1 2 3 4 5 6) and rises and falls, and a cha-cha line dance puts its triple on 4&5 and 8&. If those dances are new to you, ballroom dance types explains each partner original.

Competitive line dance

Competition is the most formal type. The United Country Western Dance Council (UCWDC) describes competitive line dance as having “grown far from its roots in social line dance,” drawing on country, ballroom, Latin, street and stage motion (UCWDC: Line Dance Descriptions). Its divisions differ in what dancers must do:

At the Country Dance World Championships, line dances are judged in six categories by motion, and the rules set each category’s tempo at plus or minus 5 BPM from the suggested song for that dance:

The street category borrows from the styles in types of street dance.

Counts. A count is one beat. Most sheets group counts in eights, so 32 counts means four 8-count sections. An ”&” is a split beat between two numbered counts, as in the 1&2 of a kick-ball-change, which is how three steps fit into two counts in a shuffle or a coaster.

Walls. A wall is the direction you face. In a one-wall dance you finish each pass facing the front. A two-wall dance alternates front and back with a half turn per pass, and a four-wall dance ends each pass a quarter turn away, so you face all four walls in four passes (Wikipedia: Line dance). Some dances reach the new wall with a three-quarter turn instead, and mid-pattern you may face a diagonal between two walls. Not every dance was built for rows facing front: the original Electric Slide was danced in two lines facing each other.

Phrasing, tags and restarts. When a song’s phrases and the dance drift apart, choreographers patch the gap. A tag adds a few extra counts at set points, and a restart starts the dance over from count 1 partway through a pass. The Finders Keepers sheet uses both: a 12-count tag at the end of walls 2, 5 and 8, and restarts after 32 counts of walls 3, 6 and 7, so its passes run 48, 60, 32, 48, 60, 32, 32, 60 and 32 counts. Some dances have separate A, B and C parts that match the song’s repeating phrases, and the UCWDC runs a whole ABC choreography division for them.

Level. Every sheet carries a level from the choreographer: Bill Bader’s Boot Scootin’ Boogie and the Celtic Slide are listed as Beginner, Finders Keepers as Intermediate. UCWDC competitors move up through Newcomer, Novice, Intermediate and Advanced.

Step sheets use a shared shorthand. The definitions below follow Wikipedia’s dance-move entries (its glossary of dance moves and the pages linked in the table), the UCWDC Glossary of Movements and the two step sheets cited above.

Two habits make this table practical. Read the count column before the description, because the count tells you where the half beats go. And start with the vine, stomp, kick, brush, heel swivels and ball change: those six make up most of Bill Bader’s Boot Scootin’ Boogie.

Newcomers often ask how a whole room knows what to do when a song starts. The answer is that the song tells them. Each dance is tied to its music, so when a familiar track begins, the people who know its dance step onto the floor. Many socials also teach a dance first and then play it. When a song has several dances (see the first myth below), the floor may split into groups doing different routines. The Celtic Slide’s sheet even calls it good for a “split floor.”

A few habits keep a mixed floor working:

• Stand where you can see someone who knows it. The middle of the group is easiest. After each quarter turn the front row changes, so a dancer at the very back may end up leading the room.
• Join at the start of a pass, at the end of a line, never cutting through rows mid-pattern.
• Leave the outer lane to couples. Traveling partner dances move counterclockwise around the edge, while dances that stay in one place keep to a smaller area (Wikipedia: partner dance glossary). Line dancers fill the center.
• Wear a sole that turns. Every pivot and quarter turn asks your shoe to release from the floor. The smooth-soled options are compared in the best shoes for line dancing, and whether your western boots will work is answered in can you line dance in cowboy boots.

If you are here for fitness, the federal Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (HHS, 2018, p. 59) list line dancing as a moderate-intensity activity (HHS guidelines PDF). How that compares with other styles is laid out in is dance a good workout.

• “The song is the dance.” Not reliably. At least 16 line dances have “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” in the title (Wikipedia), so always check the choreographer on the sheet.
• “The Electric Slide everyone knows is the original.” The original had 22 steps. The 18-step version most people know became popular in 1989 (Wikipedia: Electric Slide).
• “The Bus Stop was the first four-wall line dance.” Stanford’s syllabus credits the Hully-Gully, about 15 years earlier, as the first to turn a quarter and repeat facing a new wall.
• “Line dancing means country.” Soul, Latin, Celtic, disco and ballroom-rhythm dances are all line dances, and competition has a whole category for hip-hop.
• “Beginner means no turns.” Bill Bader’s Boot Scootin’ Boogie, the Celtic Slide and the Electric Slide are all 4-wall, so you turn every pass. What rises with level is syncopation and structure: the intermediate Finders Keepers packs in shuffles, half pivots, a tag and three restarts.

Move through the families in roughly this order. Go to the next stage only when the criterion is met.

1. 1
   Six beginner steps. Vine, rock step, pivot turn, stomp, kick and brush, each at a slow tempo. Move on when you can do each on count, both directions, without looking down.
2. 2
   One 4-wall beginner dance. A country or call-out dance is easiest. Move on when you can finish all four walls of a whole song without stopping.
3. 3
   The half-beat steps. Shuffle, coaster and jazz box. Move on when you land the ”&” on time at the song’s tempo.
4. 4
   A phrased dance with one tag or restart.Move on when you hit the tag or restart without watching anyone.
5. 5
   A second family. Soul, Latin, Celtic or a waltz line dance, plus kick-ball-change, cross rock, lock step and the Monterey turn.

The named dances for each stage are listed in line dances to learn, in order, and the practice habits that make any style stick are covered in how to be a better dancer.