Dancing On The Line

On Following Instructions, Collective Daydreaming, Spurs, Studs & Double Dosing

I love to dance but I am completely unable to follow directions - in the same way I can’t follow a recipe. This has never stopped me from giving either of them a red hot go, but at some point I always just have to give up and go with my own flow, with variable results, mostly when it comes to baking. When it comes to the dance floor, I can dish it out, even though I can’t take it, if you know what I mean.

Baby’s first GIF

Last Sunday night I went line dancing at Spurs Night in Toronto! It was so fun. Could I follow a single instruction? Um, not at all.

I felt bad for the foot height camera set up I noticed, of which my feet would have been destroying the beautiful symmetry they were trying to capture (there’s always one, sorry Spurs!). It was mesmerising watching the people around me all move together in a liquid wave of spins and shimmies and kick ball changes, everyone lost in their own Western hued world of concentration and flow. I was so grateful to be smiled at and feel welcomed into a non judgmental dancing queen haven where everyone was all caught up in what their own feet were doing, and not at all fussed by mine, that were hampered not only by my incredible lack of coordination but also by a couple of glasses of wine and being accidentally three hours late.

But I twirled and stomped and stepped and kicked and box stepped five or fifteen steps behind everyone else and always spinning in the wrong direction at the wrong time and had an absolute ball nonetheless. I didn’t feel awkward being there alone one bit. We slow line-danced to the song Cool About It by boy genius which was a genius choice and just my speed and I’ve now been singing on repeat even as I sleep for the past six days. I slipped out as the night was coming to a close with a particularly complicated set of moves that I just couldn’t keep up with by my faux-moves, feeling happy-tired and exhilarated and determined to get more dancing into my life.

It’s unusual for me to enjoy a group activity - despite my sweet and loving nature, I’m basically a loner with misanthropic tendencies. Maybe it’s a Piscean duality thing, I don’t know. I deeply dislike crowds, except for the very rare instances where I enjoy giving myself over to the abandon of the mosh pit of a band I truly love. I also instinctively retreat from being told what to do, generally with the hackles rising on my neck (note to self; wtf are ‘hackles’?).

But something about being part of a group engaged in a simple united purpose for no reason other than pure fun, focus and satisfaction, to music, hit me in the right spot. The next day I happened upon an article on the serious neurological benefits of learning dance moves. It seems the combination of mental and physical challenges gives the perfect double dose of hippocampus and brain plasticity stimulation.

In the Chris Hemsworth TV series Limitless, which I watched recently on a flight, exploring the most powerful ways to improve our physical and mental wellbeing and longevity, his neurologist drops him in the middle of the wilderness and sends him and his friend on a gruelling two day trek to a particular point without a map or technology to achieve the same brain zapping result. He could have just taken up line dancing or Zumba in Byron Bay!

Adding the synchronised group effort on top of the heady brew of mental and physical exercise encourages an even deeper layer of profound Delta waves neurological magic to occur, similar to the effects of meditation. Obviously I’m no scientist but I did read a description likening this to the advantages gained by scraping the plaque off of your teeth. Brains get flabby and dusty from lack of use just like everything else.

Even watching dancers can provide similar benefits. Neurolive, an ongoing research study led by Dr Guido Orgs which fitted performers and audience members with electrode caps to measure and gather data on synchrony, revealed their brain activity aligned and their shared experience was similar to “collective daydreaming”.

And then there’s the mood and neuro enhancing rewards of connection with community.

Queer communities have always been pioneers of creative solutions and artistic vision, and let’s face it, fun. LA’s secret underground line dancing club phenomenon Oil Can Harry’s started up over 50 years ago when it was illegal for two men to dance together, in a joyous reclamation of Southern culture by those that had been traditionally excommunicated from it, since morphing and expanding internationally into events cunningly named variations of Hoedown, Stud, Saddle and Cowboy C*untry.

The beautiful short 2024 documentary Stud Country, begins with the statement ‘The feeling of line dancing and being in lock step with people is kind of indescribable … when we see people moving in unison it triggers this human response. People call it “church”…’. One of the long time dedicated dancers in the documentary declares ‘For so many of us, this is home’, another states ‘I am being reborn through the dance’.

If reading this has intrigued you, I do urge you to give it a go, even if it’s just in your lounge room with one of the many lessons you can find online. I am inspired by my heel toe quick-step into this world to not only seek out more dancing, in all kinds of forms, but to finish the weird solo country album imaginarily entitled ‘Lonesome Electric Cowgirl’ that I recorded some demos for in Nashville years ago and then abandoned. I have a feeling it must just be the right time.

Self portrait of a lonesome electric acoustic cowgirl

Signing off with love to all the kickers and the kids and the urban cowboy angels, see you on the neon dance floors of my mind - I’ll be the one messing up the two step with gay abandon!

Lo x

Go on, give me your hearts. You know you want to.