Allons Danser

When did we stop dancing?

It’s been a long time since the weekly town hall dance acted as the structured incubator for romance, or the dance club as the necessary respite from a hard day’s work. A century ago, most people absorbed dance as part of the generalized social fabric. Today, many adults across America wouldn’t even know where to go dancing, just for fun. Or even if they did, they wouldn’t feel comfortable showing up there. They wouldn’t know what to do.

Theorize as to how and why this cultural shift occurred: there are the many evolutions of media and its impact on music consumption, there is the introduction of the Internet—where we can now watch dancing and live music without having to participate in it, where we can all interact without physical embodiment. And, perhaps most profoundly, there is the rise of hyper-individualism, at the cost of community-based social ecosystems.

Ann Glaviano, a forty-one-year-old professional dancer in New Orleans, describes how, in her thirties, she observed her friends, especially her male friends, losing their adolescent insecurity, coming to understand the pleasures of dancing, and doing their best to take part in it when they’d go out, but being totally unequipped. “They just did not know how. I thought it was so tender, and also so very sad.”

Whatever the breaking point actually was, the day dance became niche was a loss for society. Simultaneously art and sport, catharsis and bonding, dance of every level and genre has been scientifically shown to have more impact on longevity and eudaimonia—an Aristotelian concept that means ‘a state of living well’—than virtually any other physical activity.

“Dancing is your birthright as a person,” said Glaviano. “I think it’s spiritually and therapeutically important for everyone to dance. I’m so serious.”

Though no longer mainstream, dance still survives, thrives even, within little pockets of the social ecosystem—spurring micro-communities across America. Here in Louisiana, people are carving out spaces where we can exercise this “birthright”—enjoying the ancestral joy of movement in communion with others.  

Meeting the People Where They Are

One of the biggest barriers keeping people, especially young people, from learning to dance today is simple: fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of embarrassment, fear of being bad at something. “It’s a risk,” said Glaviano. “It’s scary to show up to a place that you’ve never been to do a thing you’ve never done in front of other people. It’s a really vulnerable position to be in.”

Chung Thang, a Lafayette dance instructor and self-proclaimed introvert, said that he actually finds social dancing to be an antidote to modern day social anxieties. “It’s a structured social experience,” he said. “You can still get out there, and talk to people, and meet people. But you know exactly what to do for like three minutes at a time, and you’re automatically with people who have a shared interest.”

[Read this: Seven Days at Basin Arts: Inside the multi-faceted Lafayette arts incubator] 

When it comes to ballroom, the pinnacle of traditional partner dancing, people tend to have a preconceived idea of competition-worthy lifts and classical music. “People might have an idea that ballroom is very formal, but there are so many styles that are very relaxed and loose and modern,” said Baton Rouge instructor James Heath.

Ballroom encompasses an incredible range of genres, skill levels, and styles within itself—something Heath hopes to communicate to the general public. “Everyone is welcome,” he emphasizes in his beginner classes at the newly opened Baton Rouge Ballroom, where he teaches everything from cha-cha and rumba, to waltz and East Coast Swing.

Heath said that his students range from ages eight to ninety, and that he’s seen people come to ballroom dancing for a multitude of reasons: whether that be exercise, training for competitions, mental health, or social interaction. “There are so many reasons why people come in,” he said.

Ballroom is what brought Thang into the dance world. He was a student at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette looking for ways to find community and, on a whim, decided to check out the student ballroom club. In no time, he had worked his way up to instructor and was discovering that the basics of ballroom granted him access to the spectrum of dance genres, from casual Cajun and zydeco to the more technical West Coast Swing—which he started teaching every week.

I first learned about what Thang was up to while scrolling Instagram. At twenty-five years old, he’s trying to reach the new generations where they are, with Reels cutting between young people weaving, turning, dipping, and stepping to songs like Morgan Wallen’s “You Proof” and The Chicks’ “Tonight the Heartache’s on Me.”

“If you live in Lafayette, Louisiana and you’re looking to get out of the house, meet new people, and build real friendships, that’s why we created Parish Nights,” he appeals in one video, promoting the experience as an option apart from traditional modern nightlife, where old fashioned fun reigns, and authentic connection is the goal.

"Dancing is your birthright as a person. I think it's spiritually and therapeutically important for everyone to dance." 

—Ann Glaviano

Held on Friday evenings, Parish Nights are targeted to people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine—a demographic that Thang wasn’t encountering organically in other local dance communities. He said he looked around one day and realized that “everybody I was hanging out with was between fifty and seventy.”

But Thang suspected there were other young people like himself in Lafayette. He started Parish Nights as a way to foster a dance community specifically for that demographic. Instead of West Coast Swing, he decided to focus on country swing and line dancing—“They’re simpler,” he said. “You can pick it up quick, and there is an instant gratification. Maybe it has to do with our generation’s desire for that quick hit of dopamine, but people really love it.”

In New Orleans, Glaviano is also homing in on the idea of making spaces where social dance can feel easy, unintimidating, and safe. As a DJ, she’s been hosting her HEATWAVE! Dance parties at bars across the city since 2013, playing exclusively “rare and sentimental” records from the years 1957–1974—“post swing, pre-disco.”

“For this specific era of dance, you don’t need a partner, and there isn’t complex choreography” she said. “There were fad dances, but they were one-off steps, and no sequences. Like, ‘The Twist.’ A baby can do the Twist. And you know you’re doing it in the right moment because the song exhorts, ‘Come on baby, let’s do The Twist.’ You kind of can’t fail.”

The dancefloor Glaviano cultivates at HEATWAVE! is shaped by a specific form of dance-fueled ecstasy. She doesn’t want couples twirling across the floor, capitalizing attention. She hates when a circle forms. “We’re not taking turns,” she said. “The night is for everyone to be on the ride together. This is specifically meant to be solo, freestyle, social dancing. I want people to forget they have a face because they are dancing and singing so hard. There’s something that happens in your body . . . that’s pinnacle for me. That’s what I’m trying to do. No one is standing there sipping their drink trying to look sexy. It’s not sexy. It’s, like, unhinged. That level of unselfconsciousness, available to everyone, is my goal.”  

All Together, Now

Over the past year, Glaviano has also begun incorporating line dancing into the experience at HEATWAVE! It’s something she’s been interested in from the beginning. “The experience of unison choreography gives me a very deep dancerly pleasure, but I also think it’s a human pleasure,” she said. “It’s just so great for groups of people to do a superfluous art thing together. I get, like, emotional about it.”

She said she’s tried a few times to get people excited about line dancing in New Orleans, but that it didn’t really hit until after Richard Simmons died last year, when she hosted a Sweatin’ to the Oldies tribute night—inviting people to attend a mixer and line dancing class before the actual DJ set. In the Instagram post Glaviano made about the night, she wrote that the event “exceeded her wildest expectations,” and that she’d received countless messages from attendees about “how long it’s been since they’ve gotten to sweat it out on a dance floor.”

Since then, she’s started hosting her line dance-focused HEATWAVE! nights once a month, usually at Okay Bar. “It’s just great,” she said. “You’re learning something alongside people. Nobody is picking it up immediately. You can laugh at yourself.”

The pleasure of harmonious group dancing is also the driving force behind a growing community of folks across the region, who are regularly coming together to practice the tradition of contra dance—a form of English and Scottish country dancing dating as far back as the seventeenth century, in which dancers move in coordinated lines and formations, performing simple steps at the direction of a “caller,” who directs dancers to do moves like “circle left,” “swing,” and “do-si-do.”  

“Dancing is all about breaking that barrier of like, you and me. No, this is us, together.” —Adeline Miller 

In Baton Rouge, the Louisiana Contras & Squares group meets for a dance on Saturdays once a month at St. Alban’s Chapel. Margaret Lovecraft—who has taken lessons in ballroom, Irish dancing, and tap dancing throughout her life—started going to the contra dance in 2023. “I just loved it,” she said. “I didn’t have to bring a partner, because you dance with everybody. It’s very much a group thing. And it’s not hard or intimidating, but it’s challenging enough and you can perfect it.”

“Once you learn the figures, you develop a muscle memory, and you can just let one flow into another,” explained Charlene Heaton, co-founder of Louisiana Contras & Squares. “You’re using your body and you’re doing something that’s fluid. It’s this wonderful thing.”

The dance is always performed to live music, adding a layer to the experience. “That really gets my soul going, and makes my feet want to dance,” said Lovecraft.

The passion for this specific form of dance has connected the group to a broader network of contra dance enthusiasts across the region, including on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in Natchez; there is even an emerging group in St. Francisville. Members often travel to festivals hosted in major cities across the country, during which they take part in massive dances with hundreds of people. “It’s pretty special to feel part of a big group like that,” said Heaton. “All the different styles that go on, the different energy levels.”

[Read more about social dancing culture in Acadiana.] 

Take My Hand

Part of the unique pleasure of social dance, especially partner dancing, is the opportunity to physically connect with other people within the confines of, essentially, structured play.

“The reason I think there is so much laughter in our dances is because people are playing,” said Heaton. “They’re joking around. Some are doing things backwards or adding extra flourishes. And I’ve made some beautiful friendships through it.”

“It’s not about being serious,” said Ashley Dugas, who teaches Cajun dancing in Carencro. “It’s not about knowing the steps precisely and at the right time. It’s really just about having fun and enjoying where you’re at.”

Heath said he believes dance is a singular form of human communication. “It’s a way of talking without using words, of creating your own story through movement,” he said. “And you’re dancing so close to each other, you have to get very comfortable, in a platonic and respectful way. It’s a partnership, or like a team.”

“It’s so open and eager,” said Cajun dance instructor Adeline Miller. “Because dancing is all about breaking that barrier of like, you and me. No, this is us, together.”

“It’s such a quick way to get to know someone,” echoed Drake LeBlanc, a Lafayette-area artist who is frequently seen on zydeco and Cajun dancefloors across Acadiana. “And it’s beautiful. You learn a lot about yourself, and there is this social and almost spiritual connection that you develop with your partner that can last a lifetime.”

But at the same time, it doesn’t have to be that deep—LeBlanc says that there are occasions when he’s met someone dancing, and considered that person a friend, but the relationship remains relegated to the specific universe of the dancefloor. “We laugh because there will be people I’ve been friends with for like two or three years, and we have no idea what the other person does for work,” he said. “It’s like its own mini network, separated from everything else going on in the world.”

“Dancing has always been something associated with joy and togetherness,” said Erica Fox, a musician and the executive director at the Lafayette African American Museum and cultural center Maison Freetown, where over the past year she has started hosting old time house lalas with zydeco music and dance classes. “It doesn’t matter if you’re strangers, or have been knowing each other forever, dance can be this kind of unifying tool to bring people together.”

Louisiana’s Culture of Dance

In the national landscape of social dance, Louisiana holds a rare position of prominence—especially in Acadiana, where the traditions of Cajun and zydeco dance remain an integral part of the culture that defines the region. Especially active around the periphery of the folk music scenes, the local dancing community is very much alive—and even, in recent years, youthful.

“Around here, you can find dancing once a month at the Creole Jam at Feed 'n Seed, every Wednesday at the Blue Moon Cajun Jam or Antique Alley, zydeco on Thursdays at Rock ‘n Bowl, music at the Hideaway, Saturday brunch at Buck and Johnny’s,” said Joshua Kirby, a zydeco dance instructor. Sunday is the best day for dancing, he went on, with Vermilionville’s Bal du Dimanche, often a show at Rock ‘N’ Bowl, a show at Cypress Cove Landing in Henderson, and—his favorite—zydeco at O’Darby’s in Carencro.

Many people in this region, including Miller, Fox, LeBlanc, and Dugas, grew up entrenched in the world of local dance traditions. “Probably just as soon as I was able to walk, they would have me dancing on my dad’s shoes at Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge,” said Miller, whose early exposure to Cajun dancefloors put her on a path to becoming a professional musician. Dugas, born into a Cajun music dynasty (her father is Kevin Dugas, her grandfather Nolan Dugas), was always encouraged to play the music, but found herself more entranced by the dancefloor. “I’d rather be the center of attention there than on stage,” she said, laughing.

Fox remembers dancing with her cousins to records of Rockin’ Sydney and Clifton Chenier to entertain her grandmother, who was immobile. “There was zydeco always playing, and we’d dance at family reunions or get-togethers, always,” she said.

LeBlanc grew up exposed to some zydeco when joining his cousins on trail rides, but said that his family mostly danced swing out—a style of dance rooted in Black culture that is typically performed to R&B music, with origins as part of the Lindy Hop. He didn’t start dancing in earnest, with intention, he said, until right before the pandemic. “That’s when I started going out, trying to learn all these different styles of dance,” he said, noting how distinct swing out is from zydeco, which is itself totally distinct from Cajun. “But, just like in the music, they all take influences from each other.”

[Read more about the young women, like Adeline Miller, driving the local Cajun music scene: "The New Generation of Cajun Music is Woman"] 

For these dance leaders in Acadiana, social dancing is more than just a hobby—though it is that, too: “It’s just so freaking fun,” said Miller. “I have so many reasons to love dancing, but first, it’s just freaking fun. Who would have said celebrating your culture could be as fun as it is?”

Cajun and zydeco dance, an extension of Cajun and zydeco music, is a specific expression of culture in South Louisiana—an homage to the traditions of our ancestors. Most of the people who come to Dugas’s classes, she said, are there because they recall their grandparents dancing, but regret that they never learned themselves. “It’s usually, ‘We’ve always been around it, and I’m tired of just sitting in my chair when we go to a festival or the dance halls.’ And they love the music, they’re just unsure of what they’re doing on the dance floor, and they’re shy or nervous.”

“I have so many reasons to love dancing, but first, it’s just freaking fun. Who would have said celebrating your culture could be as fun as it is?” —Adeline Miller

Kirby observes the same in his zydeco classes, which he conducts in partnership with Fox at Maison Freetown. “People just want to experience their own culture in a way that they’ve witnessed, but never felt they had access to,” he said.

In fact, Fox and Kirby’s Maison Freetown zydeco dances emerged directly from a community demand for an evening French Table. “It was a younger demographic, who wanted something in the evenings, wanted to learn more about Kouri-Vini and practicing Creole French,” said Fox. “So we wanted to add a little spice to it, and to find a way to put the language into practice by listening to zydeco songs en Français, and then dancing.” The lala-style house dances quickly outgrew the space at Maison Freetown, and now Fox and Kirby have taken the experience on the road to venues across the state.

“Music has always been on the front lines of cultural preservation in Louisiana,” said LeBlanc, emphasizing that even more than the music, dance is the most accessible point of entry into the larger efforts of cultural appreciation and protection in our region. It’s something fundamentally about having a good time, and you don’t need to play an instrument, or speak the language, to participate.

“There are a lot of ways to participate in our culture,” said Miller. “But maybe you don’t like to cook, and you don’t play an instrument. Learning our language is super important, but it’s a long process and it’s hard. What’s easy is to go to a dance class, or just ask somebody to teach you a few steps real quick. I can show you everything you need to know in like two hours, and then you have this whole new area of your life, directly connected to your region and probably your ancestry.”

Not that the experience is relegated only to those of Cajun and Creole descent—some of the most passionate people on local dancefloors and in dance classes are transplants, or even tourists. Kirby, an Atlanta native, has only lived in Louisiana since 2019 and is today one of the local dance scene’s most familiar faces, not to mention a fierce competitor on the festival dance competition scene. His first encounter was when a stranger invited him to dance at his first ever Festivals Acadiens et Créoles, and the rest is history.

“As someone who isn’t from here, dancing and going to these dancehalls and these festivals, it’s given me a commonality that I can share with folks who are part of this culture,” he said. “I want to learn the language, and I’ve experienced the landscape. And there’s more that I have yet to experience. I want to get out and go frogging. But my entryway into all of it, into frogging even, is through zydeco. I guess there are other ways to do it, but I do it through zydeco dancing.”

“People just want to experience their own culture in a way that they’ve witnessed, but never felt they had access to.” —Joshua Kirby 

South Louisiana culture, and its dancefloor, are open to everyone—this is a sentiment emphasized by each of the Cajun and Creole dancers I spoke to. The spectrum of skill levels is infinite, of age, of race. “It’s an articulation of our history of multiple communities,” said LeBlanc. When outsiders are interested enough to take part, “they become a part of our culture as well,” said Miller. 

And once people become part of that community, once they step into the cultural fold, according to LeBlanc, it’s a natural progression that they will begin to care about the larger historical and cultural efforts of cultural preservation in South Louisiana. “You realize that to ensure it continues, we have to ensure the language continues and support our musicians and our dancehalls,” he said.

“I hate playing to an empty room,” said Miller. “I’m playing for the dancers. It’s a community of giving and taking, and I’m playing for y’all. Y’all show up and dance.” 

Get Out There

Across our region, there are dozens of dance groups, events, and classes offered, ranging from ballroom to line dancing. Below are the ones mentioned in this article, but this is not a comprehensive list.

Parish Nights (Lafayette)

A country swing and line dancing event for ages eighteen to thirty-nine, held almost every Friday—begins with an informal lesson followed by social dancing. $10 per night, or $18 monthly membership. Thang is also available for private lessons. parishnights.com.

Lafayette West Coast Swing

The Lafayette West Coast Swing group meets every Thursday evening for an informal lesson, followed by social dancing. Free. Thang is also available for private lessons. lafayettewcs.com.

HEATWAVE! (New Orleans) 

DJ Ann Glaviano hosts her HEATWAVE! dance parties, playing pop records from 1957–1974, on the second Saturday of every month at Twelve Mile Limit and on the fourth Saturday of every month at Okay Bar, 9 pm–1 am. For an hour before the Okay Bar sets, Glaviano offers a line dancing class. Free. annglaviano.com.

Baton Rouge Ballroom

Classes on most evenings, ranging from beginner level to advanced, and in genres that include East Coast Swing, salsa, chacha, Bachata, waltz, and more. Heath is also available for private lessons. batonrougeballrooom.com.

Louisiana Contra and Squares (Baton Rouge) 

Held once a month on Saturdays from 3:45 pm–6:30 pm at St. Alban’s Chapel, these dances begin with a workshop for beginners, and feature live music and a caller. Free for first-timers. louisianacontraandsquares.com.

Ashley Dugas’s Cajun Dance Lessons (Carencro)

Dugas offers private dance lessons in Cajun dancing, with options for individuals, couples, kids, and large groups. cajundancelessons.com. 

Adeline Miller’s Cajun Dance Lessons (Lafayette)

Miller occasionally hosts group dance lessons at venues around Louisiana, including the Blue Moon Saloon. See her perform live with her band Amis du Teche at upcoming shows by following them on social media.

Maison Freetown LaLas and Zydeco Dance Lessons (Lafayette & Beyond)

Follow Maison Freetown on social media to learn about upcoming zydeco porch jams, lalas, and musical experiences taken on the road across Louisiana.