Scoot Your Booty!

By Guy Garcia

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT AT DENIM & DIAmonds, a country-western nightclub in Santa Monica, California, and the joint is jumping -- literally. Under a spinning glitterball flanked by stuffed moose and deer heads, several hundred people in boots and ten-gallon hats are doing something called the Electric Slide. As a band pumps out a country hit, the dancers hook their thumbs in the front pockets of their jeans and line up shoulder to shoulder. Moving together to the beat, they cross one foot over the other and take three steps to the left, three steps to the right, rock back and forth on their heels and kick high. Egged on by hoots and hollers, a few throw in an extra turn or tip of the hat, but all do their darnedest to exude country cool.

Watching from one of the club's three bars, Mike Levi, a horse rancher from the nearby San Fernando Valley, spits chewing tobacco into a Styrofoam cup and shakes his head. "To me this is fun, but it's not good," he gripes. "Most of the people here are really what country people would call city slickers."

What has true cowboys like Levi perplexed is a craze moving like a prairie fire from country honky-tonks into yuppie nightspots across America: country- line dancing. A descendant of the conga line and the Harlem Hustle, line dancing lets any number join in on a series of dips, kicks and turns, under names like Walkin' Wazi, Boot Scootin' Boogie, Tush Push, Neon Moon and Honky- Tonk Stomp.

With its emphasis on old-fashioned manners and clean fun, the country line is square dancing for the '90s, the perfect pastime for the chummy, cuddly, slightly corny Clinton years. The trend was already gathering steam when Billy Ray Cyrus' 1992 hit Achy Breaky Heart spawned a line dance called the Achy Breaky. Now new ones are being made up every day. Kirsten Bonn, a former ballerina who teaches line-dancing classes at Denim & Diamonds, estimates that there are more than a thousand variations.

For those who would rather practice at home, Minneapolis-based Quality Video Inc. distributes a series of instructional line-dancing videos. The firm has shipped 650,000 copies of the tapes since they were introduced last September, and is currently filling orders at the rate of about 100,000 a month.

Line dancing is spreading to areas not traditionally considered country- western strongholds. In the boutiquey historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, Southerners are lining up to scoot their boots at the Blue Coyote. This week Denim & Diamonds will open a 16,000-sq.-ft. venue at a former Playboy Club site in midtown Manhattan. "It's not just a fad," maintains Dave Cervini of New York City's C. and W. station WYNY, who has helped promote line-dancing events on New York's Long Island. "You never see drugs, weapons, fights. It's definitely a change. It's a return to something peaceful."

"I think the biggest group that's into line dancing is people looking for something to do with the opposite sex without drinking," says Steve Cross, a dance instructor at Tooles, in Phoenix, Arizona. "It's a safe way to meet someone without hearing, 'Can I buy you a drink?' " The casual ambience is an attractive alternative to the pickup scene. "Dancing's a way to have fun without getting into emotional relationships," says Mike Martinelli, a college student who works as a waiter at Nashville's Wrangler.

None of which impresses all those wryly disgruntled types like rancher Levi. They're still skeptical about the onslaught of country converts, some of whom do their line dancing to cuts by M.C. Hammer and Madonna. "We call them yuppie cowboys," says Ken Peters, manager of Denver's Grizzly Rose. "They're the ones who have never been on a horse." Still, Peters admits, "country music will never die as long as it keeps changing." And as long as a fresh herd of tenderfeet are ready to jump on the country-line bandwagon.

With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Deborah Fowler/Houston