If a person is new to line dancing, they should stand in the middle of the floor so they’re surrounded by other dancers. That way, when turning to each side of the room as the dance continues, they’ll have someone to watch.
On Thursday evenings, Lavender Roots Dance Co. offers its queer line dance class at dance studio Turn Their Heads. The $15 entry fee gives participants permission to dance with the rainbow lights, and space to embrace one’s own queer identity. As the group’s three co-founders tell it, they’re all on a similar journey: from growing up with Southern roots and listening to country music with their families, to rejecting it all, to embracing it again. Line dancing is a conduit.
Previously, Ellie Crain’s dance experience was limited to marching band and the nearly universal experience of fifth-grade line dancing.
“Moving to Washington, D.C., really awakened this reclaiming of what it means to be Southern and not wanting to be associated with the negative parts of Southern culture,” says Crain, who grew up in Clarksville, Tenn. “In the last couple of years, I have not turned my nose up quite so much at the things that are loudly part of Southern culture, and this is one of them.”
Queer line dancing often includes song swaps, which means performing a prescribed line dance to a gay anthem, like a Chappell Roan or Muna song. The Lavender Roots founders point out, however, that country songs are also anthems of queer people — the same as explicitly gay songs are.
“Country songs are good, and more gay people should be brave enough to say so,” says co-founder Salem Horne. “There is something about, ‘I’m dancing to a song that I used to listen to in the backseat of my mom’s car in the early 2000s.’ I didn’t know there was going to be a time in my life where I felt like my weird little queer self was embraced by that. I have a new relationship with this song, with this genre.”
Crain, Horne and Attie Marshall were the most consistent guests of a now-defunct Nashville branch of Stud Country, a Los Angeles-based company that produces queer line dancing nights. While Lavender Roots hopes to one day produce larger-scale events, its path is a bit different from an organization located in L.A., where “everybody is gay anyway,” Crain jokes.
Success for Lavender Roots looks like intimate Thursday night classes that stand on their own, but can also help break down the barrier to entry to Nashville’s more experienced dance crowd at places like Nashville Palace.
“To enter into a place like the Nashville Palace is intimidating if you don’t know line dancing — period, end of story,” Crain says. “And if you add in any other marginalized identity, it’s hard to tell whether people are looking at you funny because you look visibly queer or because you just don’t know the dance.”
There’s power in going as a group, the founders say.
Lavender Roots’ leaders pick up dance routines to teach in class at line dancing spots around town and on social media. There are different versions of many of the dances, however, because line dancing is a regional art. On one occasion at Nashville Palace, the Lavender Roots crew began performing an alternate routine they had learned at one of their old Stud Country classes.
“Are y’all from New Jersey?” one patron asked. “No, we’re just gay!” Horne replied.
For Lavender Roots, it’s not really about the dancing — the dancing is a vehicle to community. It’s why they go to dinner after class every week.
Marshall happened upon the group shortly after her move to Nashville roughly one year ago. She’d been eyeing the group for months online, pledging that she would join when she finished working as a firefighter at a national park in Mississippi. The move was no coincidence.
“Because I’m born and raised in the South, queer community can be hard to come by sometimes,” Marshall says. “I knew that that was the first element that I was looking for when I moved to a new place. I really wanted to feel like I was connected to my queer peers in a way that I really hadn’t experienced in my life before.”
On the Thursday night dance floor, Marshall draws a comparison between dancing in unison and community care.
“We’re all relying on one another, watching them to know when the next beat needs to come,” she says. “There’s that sense of unknown, that element of ‘I’m not quite sure what I’m doing yet, but I trust the people around me to show me what I need to do.’ That’s really profoundly impactful to me.”
