My roommate’s family is visiting Austin from North Carolina. On Friday, they went out to a massive country-music club, had a great time, and decided to go back last night. They invited me along.
I’m hardly a country music fan. Given my druthers, I would listen to rock, pop, punk, Goth, techno or hip-hop before country. I decided to go along along anyway, and think of the whole thing as cultural research. Unwilling and unable to really dress the part, I wore my regular clothes and stuck to my self-imposed ban on hairspray.
I grew up outside of Houston. I learned how to two-step when I was 12. My then-boyfriend’s family loved to go out dancing, so they pushed the living room furniture out of the way, popped in an instructional video, demonstrated a few steps, and then took us along to a community-center dance. Ill-coordinated and rather shy, I’m hardly a demon on the dance floor but I can get by without falling over or dying of embarassment.
I was surprised that two of them didn’t know how to two-step. I had always assumed it was done wherever country music was played, despite being called the Texas two-step. Are there any country-music-fan Dopers who can tell me if this is the case?
The Texas two-step is alive and well in Texas and the contiguous areas of the border states (Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana). It was once the predominate dance in country bars, but is on the wane outside those areas as the pablum that is NashVegas cross-over pseudo-Pop has taken over as “Country” music.
I remember growing up in New Orleans there were a few occassions where p.e. class or youth groups had days where people would come in and teach us kids how to dance various dances, and amongst them was the two-step. I think these classes were foreshadowing to what you saw in the fact that they would teach us the basics, and then spend the rest of the time working on showing us various line-dances. It seems line-dancing has become a rather prominant dance form amongst young kids (high school in good ol’ Beaumont saw it’s fair share of two-steppers, but the dance floors didn’t get torn up until the good ol’ electric slide or Boot Scootin’ Boodie came on), and as they progress into young adults, the good ol’ two step gets filtered out. There are a few old honkey-tonks around where it’s still pretty prominant here in Texas, but outside, I think it’s the same as LA.
Wow - another Texarkana doper! I actually learned the Two Step as part of my music/art class in 6th grade in a Texas public school. I just figure it is so much of the culture that require you to learn it.
No. VA checking in, and although the West Coast swing is more popular here, the two step is alive and well. The country bar I go to only plays line dance songs on band breaks. They mix it up with the east coast swing, the west coast, two-step, El Paso, shadish (sp), waltz. I can do all the above, but I know not one line dance.
BTW, I went to elementary school in AL, they taught us square dancing in PE. My shoe flew off and hit someone in the head during the performance. I was so embarrassed, I danced the rest of the recital in one shoe.
I moved to Little Rock several years ago. I still get to T-Town every now and then though. I miss the Ark-La-Tex. TLC Hamburgers, 98 Rocks, Darrell Reboucheeeeeee…SPORTS!