On a soggy Tuesday night in Brooklyn, bundled-up twentysomethings and thirtysomethings noisily file into a dance hall. The toes of cowboy boots peek out from under jeans and peasant skirts; Stetson hats stud the sea of heads. Inside, under the shards of light coming from a gigantic disco ball, they dance. Specifically, they line dance. A man in cow-print pants, a black leather thong, and a fringed cape kicks his heels high. The hundreds of people tap their feet, clap, scream and glide through the motions of the set.
This is Stallion Countrythe queer line dance and two-step party founded by Sean Monaghan, 36, and Bailey Salisbury, 39. After amassing a cult following in Los Angeles (including singer-actress Reneé Rapp and indie supergroup Boygenius), where it started in 2021, Stud Country now regularly hosts parties in New York at Brooklyn Bowl and Georgia Room. All over the city, everyone is dancing in lines in clubs and bars, in school classes. East Village Ukrainian Restaurant; at an LGBT+-run Hell’s Kitchen club that has been in business for almost three decades; at a honky tonk party in Queens recently headlined by singer and actress Lola Kirke.
Denim culture has been on a wave that recently peaked, in quick succession, with Pharrell Williams’ western collection for Louis VuittonLana Del Rey’s announcement of a country album and Beyoncé’s long teaser about her new album Act II: Cowboy Carter. Molly Goddard He gave a nod to western wear in his AW24 collection with yoke and embroidered shirts. Edward Crutchley It offered upholstered cowboy hats and leather laces. AND Stetson has been struggling to keep up with demand for its hats.
For anyone who thinks line dancing is for the stern Southern conservatives, Stud Country cheerfully and defiantly proves them wrong. “I say Stud Country is explicitly queer, but not exclusively queer,” Monaghan says at an East Village café as a Chihuahua in a pink hoodie squirms on Salisbury’s lap.
The two friends from the Bay Area punk scene have a background in dance: Salisbury’s mother was a ballet teacher and Monaghan did Irish dance competitively. When Salisbury moved to Los Angeles about seven years ago, they began line dancing at Oil Can Harry’s, then the city’s oldest gay bar. When it closed during the pandemic, they were “devastated” and decided to maintain it themselves. The Zoom classes evolved into regular parties and workshops in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Salisbury now lives.
In Stud Country, there are “leaders” and “followers” rather than the traditional pairing of men and women. “What makes it strange is the dancing partner,” Salisbury says. “Past generations were arrested for dancing with same-sex partners.” When it’s time to teach the night’s frontline dance, attendees prepare in messy rows on the dance floor, Monaghan and Salisbury run up the steps and the crowd follows, mostly stepping on each other’s toes. . There are two lessons. The rest of the night is devoted to dances that people know the steps to, mesmerizingly synchronized as they slide and stomp around the floor.
Line dancing can be complicated, but Stud Country strives to keep it accessible: “The more people on the dance floor, the better,” Monaghan says. Most of the music is country (Keith Urban, Luke Combs, now Beyoncé), but not all (Ed Sheeran, Stevie Nicks). Because it’s choreographed, it’s easy for non-dancers to get involved. “You learn the choreography, you make it yours, you express yourself freely, you leave exhausted but happy. What’s better than that? says Rona Kayewho has been teaching line dancing in New York City for 31 years.
Kaye also lists the health benefits of line dancing: It’s cardiovascular and it exercises your memory. Candace Maxwell, 33, an actress who takes line dancing classes in the East Village, adds that she considers it “meditative.” “It forces me to be present,” she says, “I can let loose and it’s fun too.” Others come for the social element.
“It’s growing exponentially, with or without us,” Salisbury says. “But etiquette, history and tradition are so important [to remember]”, he emphasizes. She and Monaghan often give impromptu history lessons, for example, explaining how the two-step style of Stud Country (slow-slow-fast-fast) has its roots in gay conventions. “It’s more meaningful when it’s connected to history,” Monaghan says. For them, dance is about community and culture – and community is culture; that history of clubs, like Oil Can Harry’s, where LGBT+ people would line dance and two-step in a safe space.
Back in Brooklyn, Amanda Chesin, a 27-year-old software engineer from Arizona, explains the club’s appeal. “I felt left out of line dancing because I felt like it wasn’t for me,” she says. “The same goes for two-stepping: as a woman, dancing with another woman I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anywhere else, but it’s great to feel that comfort and space here.”
Throughout the 20th century, the forces of Hollywood, commercialization, nostalgia, and racism came together to create the archetype of the cowboy, a white, male popular figure to whom an American national identity could be assigned, Emma McClendon, professor fashion studies assistant at St. John’s University, explains. However, she points out, cowboy culture and clothing has a diverse mix of influences: Mexican cowboy tradition and real-life cowboys, some of whom were indigenous and many others. one in four was black. “I feel like when you see cowboys portrayed, you only see a few versions.” pharrell he told reporters after the Louis Vuitton show, for which he worked with Lakota and Dakota artists. “You never really get to see what some of the original cowboys were like. “They look like us, they look like me, they look like black people, they look like Native Americans.”
Stud Country may be political, but primarily it is social. It’s a place where dancing alone becomes a communal thing. “Dance is an opportunity to make a connection with your body and with other people,” Monaghan says. It opens the door to friendship, romance and community. To the arrogance, sensuality and euphoria of group dancing; the intimacy of touching a stranger in couples dancing. “And everyone is hot,” Salisbury laughs.