Line dancing is not the latest craze

A former colleague, Chris, sent on this little piece: The Old West comes to the Far East.

Enthusiasts in the Southeast Asian city-state trace the phenomenon back to the late 1990s when a Japanese dance instructor introduced line dancing.

Pshaw. When I was in school, line dancing was a required activity on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Right after rousing renditions of the national and school anthems, and hand-over-heart recitations of the pledge, we had to get dancing to, I guess, wake us up for class. This would have been in the late 80s, early 90s.

(I wonder if they still make the classes choreograph dances for competition. Poor girls.)

Routine is everything in Singapore, critics say, and line dancing suits Singaporeans because it emphasizes conformity and reflects the city-state’s fear of risk-taking. “I think there’s a certain security in having your movements prescribed to you, and it seems very Singaporean to be playing ‘follow the leader,’” says Yong Shu Chiang, a culture critic for Today newspaper.

I doubt the dancers are following the leader because they think it’s less risky — control of public behaviour in Singapore is not always so overt, people are not always this paranoid. Line dancing suits (some) Singaporeans because, yes, it’s easy to follow the leader, and lots of Singaporeans like country and western music (God knows why, it’s not as if we have a long tradition in cattle farming and horse roping or something) — who can remember Matthew and the Mandarins ?

• 1 Jul 2004