Linedancing

Nyoh's is a relatively small restaurant/bar/night club located just off of Ohio State's campus on Olentangy River Road. On any other night of the week, typical "college dance" music, or in other words, hip-hop, would be played for a small crowd of people that spend more time socializing than dancing. However, on Tuesday nights Nyoh's is turned into a boot-scootin' paradise. The bar's normal dÐ"©cor helps in this area with its hard wood floors and wooden paneling on the walls and bar. When I attended on Tuesday night, October 16th, most of the people in attendance were dressed casually, but some stepped it up with some western flair. Many of the males could be seen wearing a button down polo, a belt with a large belt buckle, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. The girls that dressed for the theme were usually wearing a casual t-shirt paired with jeans or a jean skirt and, of course, cowgirl boots. The crowd was relatively all college ageÐ'--18-25, with a few thirty-somethings here and there. In accordance with the theme, country music was played all night long. The selections were predominately from the 1990's and this is presumably because the popularity of the genre has declined since then. However, singer's that are in the fore-front of pop-culture right now such as, Carrie Underwood were played more than once. Her song, "Before He Cheats" received rave reviews from the crowd that could not help but enjoy singing the chorus at the top of their lungs.

Seeing as that the line dancing craze ended before the turn on the century, a lot of the dancing consisted of swaying the body on the beat to music as well as a lot of partner dancing. Girls often danced with their other girlfriends by twirling each other while keeping beat by changing balance from foot to foot and swaying their hips. However, when popular line dancing songs such as, "Boot, Scoot, and Boogie," by Brooks and Dunn, were played, many of the people in attendance had the line dance memorized and helped to lead others into doing the steps. When this would occur the crowd was generally lined up in 3 or 4 parallel lines of 4 or more people. The dance was centered in the feet and usually only took up about 2 square feet around each person. When standing in second position their bodies were normally upright with shoulders square to the ground. As the choreography required them to step forward and back they would usually bend and twist at the waist while turning the same shoulder forward as the foot that stepped forward. Other common moves included stepping back and forth to the left and right by way of grapevining their feet or gliding. One of the line dances involved a repetitive set of steps that were done facing each wall of the room. In order to turn to face another direction the dancers would sweep one foot up, slap their knee while it was in a 90 degree angle and stomp the same foot back down facing whichever way they were supposed to turn. Throughout