I’m a 50-something woman finally realizing my dream to learn to line dance. For the record, I’m not talking about country and western line dancing, but what is called soul, R&B, or urban line dancing. On this blog I am going to share the dances I’m learning. Thanks for following along with me!

A little more about my line dance story…

I attended junior high School (7th and 8th grade) in south Phoenix in the late 70s. During lunch time, on the courtyard there would be a group of girls who would line dancing to popular R&B music of the time. They would line up in rows, there were usually at least a dozen.

I watched from afar, loving the synchronicity of the dancers. It was definitely a high point to my day.

But never once did I consider joining in mostly because I was extremely introverted as a child.

The other reason… I was raised Pentecostal and dancing of any kind was forbidden – well, unless you were “dancing in the spirit”. You may have heard the term “holy rollers”?

Not only was dancing banned, my favorite music was as well. That did not stop me from listening in secret, and of course while the girls danced.

Fast forward to 2015…

I brought my mother into my home for two years and nursed her back to health. It was an extremely difficult time in my life and completely drained me and put a terrible strain on my marriage.

I will forever be grateful to my brother who helped to find the program that would eventually open so that my mother could afford to live on her own again.

A few months later (September 2015) I was reading a book called Will I Ever Be Good Enough by Karyl McBride and a passage jumped out at me, telling me to pursue my passions, and suggested I might consider something I may have wanted to do as a child but was forbidden.

A month or so earlier, an acquaintance of my mother’s mentioned she attended line dance classes, and when I sat there thinking about forbidden passions I realized that I had really loved watching the line dancers in junior high.

Impulsively I did a search on the Internet, looking for the words “line dancing” and my zip code. Ironically the place where I line dance came up so I decided to stop by the very next day.

And the rest is history. I’ve learned to line dance, I’m still loving it. I’ve taught line dance to people who are blind and visually impaired, I’ve taught the class I attend when my instructor is unable to do so, and I’ve choreographed two line dances. I figure the only thing I have left to do is write a book on line dancing.

What’s your line dance story? I’d love to hear it if you’d be willing to share. 🙂