Anna Bialkowski
Editor-in-Chief
On any average night, line dancing flows with the life of boots hitting hardwood floors to a punchy country tune. People gather onto the dance floor ready to dance to their favorite song. But what if you don’t know how to line dance?
Last year, McKenzie Hampton created the FSC Line Dance Club with the mission of giving FSC students the place to learn how to country line dance.
Hampton describes how in high school, she and her friends would travel to line dancing locations all over the central Florida area, like Cowboys in Orlando, Stockyard in Tarpon Springs and Dallas Bull in Tampa.
“We would go Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. That would just be our thing,” Hampton said. “Our friend group would go, we would carpool and it was just, it was amazing.”
Although line dancing has become increasingly popular over the past few years, Hampton says that the club did not have much traction last year. She explained that most of the members were freshmen willing to learn. Now, more attendees are coming to the meetings from all levels.
Hampton says that future meetings will be around two hours long, with the goal of teaching three line dance songs. From there, the songs learned during the meeting will be released in the GroupMe so club members can continue to learn and perfect the dance throughout the week. Finally, the club carpools to a few honky tonks and dance halls in the Central Florida area, such as Wild Greg’s.
Hampton’s goal for this club is not only to teach dances, but to also inspire a level of confidence within dancers.
“I just want to inspire people to start doing [line dances], like, gaining the confidence in themselves to dance more and show their friends and get that community going,” Hampton said. “I know how prevalent it is for people to teach their own friends in their own comfort of their own space. And just having the confidence of getting on the dance floor, like at Greg’s or something else, it just takes so much out of you. And I want to push people to do that.”
The Line Dance Club will be hosting their next two meetings in October, on Oct. 8 and Oct. 29, both from 6:30-7:30 p.m. and in the Eleanor Searle Drawing Room.
Hampton leaves all students with a reminder.
“It’s okay to be yourself,” Hampton said. “Just keep dancing.”
