What is Country Swing Dancing you ask? Isn’t it that old fashion country dancing or something like square dancing that you seen back in the old days with people arm in arm? Well I’m here to dispel any myths or ideas about what you think Country Swing Dancing is if you’re not 100 percent sure how it looks and what it is.
My name is Corey Barron and I’ve been Country Swing Dancing for about 5 years now and since then I’ve joined a Country Dance Club, started another one in College, attend Country Western Dance Festivals and have competed at Bars and circuit competitions within the United Country Western Dance Counsel(UCWDC).
I’ve been to Ballroom, Latin and Swing dances and I’ve learned the basics of about 15 different styles of partner dancing. I was also named a historian of Country Western Dance in Western Canada by the “Country Pride Dance Club” for the historical knowledge I gained about the Dance club at it’s 25 year anniversary. I’ve taught students at College and I’ve travelled from coast to coast north and south in Canada and America observing the Country Dancing Bar culture and I’ve seen how different it is across the whole country.
Country Swing Dancing is a style of Dance which is a sub category of Country Western Dancing just like Salsa is a style of Latin Dancing. Country Swing Dancing is not Two Step although some may call it that. Two Step is just another style of dance within Country Western Dancing.
Two step has a different rhythm and time to the dance from Country Swing. Country Swing is also not just any style of dance you see in a Country Bar but at the same time we can see that there are differences of opinion of what it is exactly.
I’m going to give you my opinion on the matter and I know some may disagree but I’m going to state that I’ve probably had more experience talking to figureheads in the UCWDC, to Dance Instructors, Competition Judges, Historians of Dance, right down to professional dancers and good old time dancers of Country, so I’ve had my fair share of debates over this topic that I think I can reasonably answer this question.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on what Country Swing Dancing is, but the one thing that is well known about Country Swing Dancing is that mostly younger folksin and around their 20’s are doing it and they are doing it at the Country Dancing Bars.
I got started in Country Dancing late in my 20’s after watching the new 2011 movieFootloose with the Fake ID Line Dance scene and so after watching that I wanted to go see what it was like at the Country Dancing Bar. And so I went to my first Country Dancing Bar way up North in Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. The place was quite large and with a huge dance floor and I would have to say it’s size is comparable to any of the large country dancing bars in Texas. And for a city of about 100,000 people which was about 8 hours away from the nearest major city in Alberta it was quite the spectacle!
Now in that bar I seen for the very first time what Country Swing Dancing was, although at that time I couldn’t exactly identify it like I can today, because back then I didn’t know that there was so many different styles of Country Western Dancing.
Country Dancing was very confusing to me at that time because I could see everyone was dancing so differently by looking at the footwork patterns that these couples were doing on the dance floor. A lot of the people weren’t on beat but they were moving…
I think what attracted me the most was the fact that there were some really pretty young ladies that I’d never realized visited these kind of places!
So getting back to the solution to the confusion of how I identified Country Swing Dancing… Well it took a lot of learning about what Country Western Dancing is. You see Country Western Dancing is just any style of dance that is done to Country Music.
The types or styles of Country Western Dances that you can dance to Country Music are: 2 step, Polka, Waltz, Triple Two Step, Cha Cha, Country Swing, and many other styles of which there is too many to list but these are the most popular.
If you just refer to someone dancing as “Country Dancing” it could be anyone of those styles. So when they say that they were country dancing your image of what it looks like may vary after getting to know how the different styles look.
It took me a year or so of learning the different styles of dance within Country Western Dancing or “Country Dancing” when I started to understand all the confusion on the dance floor at the bar. The confusion was because everyone was doing a different style of country dancing at the same time! But not only that some were really bad at it or did it so drastically from the norm you’d have a hard time identifying what they were doing which is where a lot of the confusion was. So now I was finally understanding why I was so confused and I was starting to see what was going on and starting to put together my understanding of the whole dance scene at the bar.
In and around 6 months of my dancing journey I started to learn about the 3 other major forms of partner dancing like Latin, Ballroom & Swing Dancing. These different forms also had their own styles, for example:
Latin has: Salsa, Cha Cha, Merengue, Bachata, Mambo, Rumba and Samba, etc.
Ballroom has: Foxtrot, Waltz, Tango, Quick Step, Jive, and Night Club, etc.
Swing has: Lindy Hop, Charleston, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, Jive, etc.
Country Western has: Two Step, Triple Two Step, Polka, Waltz, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, etc.
After learning about many of the different styles of partner dances you start to realize that almost every style has a specific count and footwork pattern in the dance. Some counts go from 4 to 6 or even 8 or more depending on the style. Most styles also have a footwork pattern as well, whether it’s side to side and then a back(rock) step or continuous walk forward or a couple steps forward and then a side step, the patterns become very noticeable after some time and you start to identify the styles easily.
The biggest challenge out there for Country Dancing was that “Country Swing Dancing” was not an easily identifiable style since most people didn’t see a count or footwork pattern and that it seemed so varied among all those that did it, that many said Country Swing Dancing isn’t a style of dance.
This mostly comes from those who do not participate in doing country swing dancing. I’ve met those that have a bias against learning “Country Swing Dancing” I think it has a lot to do with the music they listen to many people don’t really like country and the others mostly because they believe it doesn’t teach the fundamentals that most styles of dance have like timing and footwork patterns. And for that they will turn young people away from probably the most valuable style of dance to learn in the market since it’s the most popular style done in Country Bars among young adults. Most of the problems come from the fact that Country Swing doesn’t really have an authority to speak for it in the Professional dance realm and even those today who are professionals and teach it seem to lack what’s going on in the bars. Most dance instructors generally don’t like the bars because they would have to deal with the drunken fool sometimes and honestly I understand totally why some wouldn’t but most people I’d say 99% are pretty easy to teach in the bar.
So getting back to answer the fundamentals question about timing and footwork patterns I’ve always pointed out to dance instructors that not every style of dance has a fixed basic footwork or timing pattern. And one example of that is Argentine Tango. Argentine Tango does not follow a fixed basic footwork pattern and it’s timing varies all over the place and I would have to say that “Country Swing Dancing” is very similar to that of Argentine Tango. It’s footwork varies and it’s timing varies based on the song and beat of the music. So how is it identified then?
When I was learning how to dance the most important rule was that you needed to land your foot on the beat of the music. Many and even myself didn’t know which beat that was because I thought it was the most prominent beat you could hear with your eat whether it was the snare drum, the bass drum, the guitar beat, bass guitar beat etc., but the beat you are supposed to follow is the consistent bass beat of the song. This beat comes from the bass drum and if it’s not in the song you listen for a bass guitar or have to find it in the voice or something else in the song that lets you know where it should be. This is a skill that is developed with time.
Most people who are not skilled dancers could be one of those types of dancers that makes you scratch your head about what style of dance they are doing on the dance floor because they are not landing on the beat with their foot, yet they probably are doing a style, but it’s probably not done to the right timing.
So if you are reading this now for the first time and have never read up on what Country Dancing is and that there are many different styles of Country Western Dancing, I hope you will take this knowledge and share it with your community so that we all can have a common ground of understanding about it.
One thing to note about the styles of dance is that there are also sub categories of each style of Dance as well. This is probably where most of the confusion comes in because now you have a Sub Category of a Sub Category of Country Dancing.
Two Step as we know it in the UCWDC World is a straight forward walking pattern of 4 steps done to 6 counts. The first two steps are one count each and the second set of steps are done to 2 counts each.
In some other parts of the world Two Step is known to be done in a shuffle footwork pattern mostly taught from amateur old school Two Steppers and what you do is you step forward on an angle to your left then step together with your right then step forward on an angle again and then the last step is done forward on an angle to the right. So it’s 4 steps in total but in a shuffle pattern to the same timing.
Many people who see Country Dancing in the shuffle pattern call that Two Step, which it is Two Step but it’s not a mainstream style anymore and some even call it Country Swing Dancing, but I want to point out that the Two Step Shuffle is not really Country Swing Dancing, I would say Country Swing is a little more simpler, all the Two Step Shuffle is, is another form of two step.
Some have called the Two Step Shuffle pattern the Texas Two Step. And the other style of Two Step where you are walking in a straight line pattern of Two Step has been called East Texas Two Step. The East Texas Two Step is what the top Country Dancing Organization heads of the UCWDC use today for their competitions.
In Two Step you have 3 basic types of dance moves which are streamlines, weaves, and whips and it’s also a progressive dance meaning couples travel down and around the dance floor. Country Swing is a swing type of dance and those dances are not progressive dances, in swing couples are stationary meaning couples don’t travel around the dance floor like they do in Two Step but rather stay in a stationary position generally and Swing Dancing also doesn’t really have streamlines and weave patterns in it either.
That being said many people that do Country Swing Dancing do travel around a dance floor and mainly it’s because everyone else is doing it or you might have to because it’s a Race Track Dance floor and if you try to stay in one place for a long period of time all the other couples who are coming towards you will run into you and basically run you over for not going with the flow.
So the flow of the people sometimes forces you to follow and progress around the dance floor even though you want to be dancing in a stationary position, and instead you have to improvise your Country Swing Dancing a bit here and there to make it progress which is where you might see people doing a combination of Two Step moves with Country Swing Dance moves down the dance floor.
And this is where it gets interesting because you end up seeing the progressive nature of Country Swing Dancing a lot and I think it’s mainly because of the mixture of the progressive two steppers and swing dancers in the same travelling area that you see Country Swing Dancers travelling down the dance floor all the time because if they stay stationary they will get run over. And because of the fact that you get thrown into the mix of Two Steppers you start to do Two Stepping moves and end up developing habits.
When you get into a habit travelling in your Country Swing it’s hard to break it so when they look like they are doing Two Step it’s probably because they are doing some Two Step moves because they have to or have developed a habit of doing two step moves with their Country Swing Dance because of the circumstances on the social dance floor.
Now this is where I think the line gets confusing also when observing Country Swing, people who know Two Step will see those who are doing Country Swing start to do Two Step moves and conclude that it’s not an identifiable style of dance since it incorporates progressive moves. This does not necessarily mean that they are not doing Country Swing because they are progressing down the dance floor because we’ve seen other dances like Waltz and West Coast Swing progress down the floor in Competitions. I would say that dances evolve and I think it’s great to have a Swing Dance have the added effect of progressing. But what makes Country Swing Dancing really stand out from other styles of Dance?
Well here’s some things I’ve noticed with Country Swing Dancing that makes it a great dance and the number one reason it’s so great is that it’s easy to learn on the fly.
If you’ve never learned a style of dance before you can usually pick up Country Swing real quick because the timing to this dance is just a simple single step pattern to the beat back and forth between your left and right foot like a simple slow dance. You learn the simple step pattern and then after learning more moves you can play with your timing and the footwork pattern just like any other styles of dance. Some may add a rock step to this style and you can, but I don’t see people doing rock steps more than 50 percent of the time when doing under arm turns etc.
I call Country Swing Dancing “Single Step” but many call it “One Step” which is just a single step to each beat rocking back and forth and the timing can change between a simple constant 1 count per step to a mixture of counts per step and that’s why you can see people doing all sorts of timing patterns to it whether it be a Two Step timing, of quicks and slows or even a Night Club Two Step Timing of Two Quicks and One Slow, Country Swing has a mixture of timings but the bare bone basics generally sticks to the simple step per beat.
The other factors that make this dance really stand out from the other styles of dance are the amount of Dips, Aerials, Lifts, Leans, Drops, Flips etc. Dips are the hallmark move of couples dancing and the one thing that stands out more in “Country Swing Dancing” than any other style of dance is the fact that you do about 5 to 10 times more dips in “Country Swing” than any other style of dance.
Lifts, aerials, leans, drops and flips are also done about 5 to 10 times more in Country Swing than any other style of dance I’ve seen anywhere. So seeing the dips, the lifts, the flips etc. all combined with a simple single step timing pattern are the key elements that make this dance it’s own unique style. And if you want to learn and see how these moves look you can click here to check out our “Country Swing Dance Moves.“
One of the things I’ve learned about teaching someone new in the bar is that you have to make things really simple! You can not go into great detail about how to time your dance and how to follow a footwork pattern or about how to hold her right etc. The more things you add the harder it is to learn and people get turned off by the amount of things you add for them to do. The reason I think Country Swing took off was because no one really cared how you did your dance. And when I teach it, it’s just the barebone basics of dance.
The first thing I tell guys and girls that are trying to learn this dance is “just imagine you are slow dancing with someone, you just rock your feet back and forth, side to side to the bass beat of the song.” To the girls and guys I would say “when you turn just keep that rhythm of stepping to the beat.” It’s that simple! Let them figure out the rest for the rest of the night.
Now one trend that I’ve been seeing today is that some of the professional dancers who are stepping in to the Country Swing Dancing world are trying to emphasize timing with a footwork pattern is more important than the lifts, dips, aerials, leans, etc. and to be honest if you are going to emphasize footwork and timing don’t leave the other stuff out. I’ve seen instructors make dance lessons so dull because they focus on barebone basics all the time and drive the young people away. You can’t get a work out from just stepping to the music and if you want them to get a real good work out start teaching moves that are more physically demanding! The young people want to learn those lifts, dips, aerials, leans etc. in their dance and that’s what keeps them coming back so make sure you make it tough and cool!
Now “Two Step” is considered by the UCWDC organization to be the most popular style of dance in the Country Western world. Now from what I’ve seen in the Dancing World so far most young adults are found in droves at Country Dancing Bars and I believe after going to different types of Dance Bars like Salsa Bars, and Swing Dances, and Ballroom Dances that Country Swing Dancing is the most popular style of partner dance for young adults out of all styles of partner dances in the world!
The reason I believe Country Swing Dancing is the most popular partner dance among young adults in the world is because Country Dance Bars are everywhere and they are full of young people, they are larger than any salsa bars, dance studios, larger than any other types of dancing places out there, and they hold hundreds of people who come many times in a week to dance. The only other types of partner dance events larger than these Country Dancing Bars are probably Dance Festivals that only happen on a yearly basis.
So if you are looking to learn a style of dance I would say go learn Country Swing! Because all the young people are doing it. And I’m sure there’s lot’s to learn and have fun while doing it.
So I hope this now gives you an idea of what Country Swing Dancing is and what it looks like and be sure to check your local Country Dancing Bar to check out Country Swing Dancing!
And if you have never introduced Country Dances to your school then maybe give it a shot. You can see the kids really love it too!
