The EIU line dancing club left the semester by learning two new country dances and one Christmas dance Dec. 1 at their last meeting of the year.

Eight members attended the meeting including four board members and the two founders of the club, communication disorder science major Lindsey Schwerdlin and human services major Kayla Tomaszkiewicz.  

The Underground Line Dancing Club may be an EIU student organization, but it has roots that run much deeper than just the university. The inspiration for the club came from the local Coles County Fair Grounds, where they host a line dancing night every Saturday 8 p.m. Many of the members of the Underground Line Dance Club joined because of prior experience line dancing at the fairgrounds.

The main instructor for the club, Tomaszkiewicz, participated at the line dance night hosted by the fair grounds. Another member of the club, Gabe McElroy, also practiced at the fairgrounds Saturday nights.  

The members that line dance on Saturdays at the fairgrounds knew more complicated dances that are not taught at the club meetings. They did some of these dances for the class half way through Friday’s meeting. These dances included complicated lifts, turns, and dips.The members who did not know these harder dances watched on the side.     

A typical Underground Line Dance Meeting starts with a main instructor standing at the front of the group where they teach dance steps to the rest of the club. For the last meeting of the semester, Tomaszkiewicz led the group through each of the dances. The first dance she started with was to the song “AA” by Walker Hays.  

After demonstrating once, Tomaszkiewicz took the group through the motions slower to teach them out to do it.

Once everyone had learned the dance, the music was turned back on and they went through the dance steps with the music for the rest of the song. The rest of the meeting went the same way, with the group learning 3 dances total. The second song was “Pontoon” by Little Big Town, and they closed the class out with a Christmas dance to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey.  

All the members of the EIU Line Dancing Club had different reasons for joining. This is the second semester the club has been running, however most of the members are new. For sophomore management, Madelyn Schiffman, Friday’s meeting was the second meeting she was in attendance at.  

“I joined because it is a fun way for me to stay active,” Schiffman said.

Most of the other club members seemed to feel the same. They all liked how the line dancing club was a fun way for them to hang out with friends and get some exercise at the same time.  

Lindsay Weiss can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].