TikTok a new Line Dance Generation
TikTok Line Dancing with Dasha - The dance steps kick off with the lyric “Did your boots stop workin’?”: Start with a right heel tap, then left heel, right heel again, followed by a lift and tap of the right foot forward and back. Next, pivot turn, and swirl an arm overhead like a lasso. While some guides say the lasso move is optional, it's essential if you want to nail the line dance just like pop-country star Dasha does on TikTok.
“I really wanted to get people dancing at my shows,” says the 24-year-old singer who created the choreography. “I’ve gone out line dancing so many times in Nashville and I see how the culture isn’t as big in my generation. I wanted to bring it back.”
@dasha Replying to @Chelsy Kearns ♬ Austin (Boots Stop Workin') - Dasha
This February, Dasha launched a TikTok line dance tutorial for her latest single, “Austin.” Fans flocked to mimic the dance, helping the song soar to No. 11 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. To date, the trending audio has been featured in over 600,000 TikTok videos, most showcasing line dancers heel-clicking and knee-slapping with captions like “someone take me line dancing asap” and “might be a country fan now.”
While honky-tonks and two-stepping have made a comeback among younger alt-country fans, line dancing seemed like a relic from the nineties. But TikTok’s dance-heavy platform is set to revive this once-mocked dance style. In recent months, its algorithms have resonated with fans from Texas to Ireland to Uganda, all boot stomping to Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Though Beyoncé hasn’t released an official line dance for the song, fans have created their own, revealing a global community of line dancers eager to engage. Newcomers to line dancing can easily join in this pastime that feels like an American cultural heritage.
A line dance is simply a repeating sequence performed by dancers arranged in—you guessed it!—a line. Everyone does the same steps simultaneously, unpartnered but together. The choreography often pairs with a specific track, usually country but not always. Line dancing emerged from disco floors in the seventies (think: the Hustle), influenced by folk dances, contredanse, and square dances worldwide. Early popular line dances were choreographed to disco hits like Ike & Tina Turner’s “Nutbush City Limits” or Charlie Green’s “Bus Stop.” In the eighties, line dancing went country after the choreographer for Urban Cowboy created dozens of line dances for the Western-themed film.
Line dancing officially tied the knot with country music in 1992 when Billy Ray Cyrus released the music video for “Achy Breaky Heart,” featuring bespoke choreography that launched the dance style into mainstream consciousness. The novelty dance didn’t just catapult Cyrus to fame—it also sparked a national craze for country line dancing.
The 1996 Spanish dance song “Macarena” perfected the line dance form. With easy-to-remember choreography and a club-friendly remix, it achieved a pre-Internet virality. That year, everyone from the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Olympic team to delegates at the Democratic National Convention did the Macarena, showcasing the line dance’s social appeal. Even after the cowboy moment of the nineties faded, line dancing lived on in fitness classes and contemporary hits like “Cha Cha Slide” and “Cupid Shuffle.”
Dance videos have long been among the most popular content on TikTok. The choreography for dance challenges is typically community-created, much like early line dances. And, similar to line dances, the steps are accessible and satisfying to re-create.
So is a TikTok dance a line dance? The answer is surprisingly complex. A recent Spotify playlist called “Line Dance” includes songs like “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins and “Slave 4 U” by Britney Spears, which have regained popularity on TikTok.
“Intention is important,” says Austin-based filmmaker and dancer Maggie M. Bailey, who directed the 2022 documentary Moving Together about the collaborative relationship between musicians and dancers. “Where did the movement originate? ‘Slave 4 U’ was choreography that made its way onto TikTok and its original intention was in art making...but TikTok dances are made to go viral, which feels like less of an artistic intention to me.”
In recent years, TikTok has become a crucial part of pop music marketing. Songs that can be easily clipped for user-created videos perform well on the app and thus on the charts. Some artists admit to writing songs designed for viral moments. But the content, including dance challenges, generally emerges from users rather than the artists themselves.
@flowfitlife “Texas Hold ‘Em” Dance Trend 🤠 #beyonce #texasholdem #dance *DC: @Matt McCall & @Dexter Mayfield 💯 #linedance #trend ♬ TEXAS HOLD 'EM - Beyoncé
Last year, musician and actress Lola Kirke repurposed an older music video into a social media line dance tutorial to promote “He Says Y’All,” the lead single for her EP Country Curious. The original 2020 music video features classic country line dance moves in a honky-tonk setting, evolving into a modern dance hall scene. However, when Kirke released a 37-second vertical clip on TikTok, the traditional line dance context got lost, and the video seemed more like a performance than an invitation to dance.
Dasha, on the other hand, effortlessly embraces TikTok’s casual aesthetic. When demonstrating wall changes, she spins in sweatpants tucked into cowboy boots. In her instructional clip, line dancing looks less like a Western relic and more like a natural extension of the dances that have captivated TikTok for years. Users recognize this as an invitation to join and re-create the dance.
“When I wrote [‘Austin’], everyone in the room was dancing to it. It was just such a dance-forward song,” says Dasha. “I thought it would be the coolest thing ever to have a big mosh pit of people line dancing at my shows.”
The official music video for “Austin” features Dasha chasing an unfaithful lover through a barn of dancers performing her choreography. With no need for a tutorial, hundreds of thousands of fans already know the steps.
Happy Linedancing and TikToking all 🤠