“My dancers are like a second family”: how the country wave swept through France – BFMTV

Country clubs abound, from Bouches-du-Rhône to Pas-de-Calais via Alsace, especially in small towns. Country seduces in the shadow of media radars.

Véronique Villette fell “in the bath of the country” ten years ago, after a recurrence of breast cancer. It was then inconceivable for this woman, then aged 48, that illness would force her to give up dancing, she who already had fifteen years of classical and five of salsa to her credit.

She remembers a country demo she had attended some time earlier – “I figured it wasn’t for me,” she recalls for BFMTV.com. And yet, this time, it’s love at first sight. Véronique Villette, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, registers for courses. Then becomes a facilitator – we do not speak of a teacher in this practice. And founded his own club in Lafox, a village in Lot-et-Garonne of just over 1,100 inhabitants, about ten kilometers from Agen.

This devouring passion now occupies several of his evenings during the week with his courses – including one for the employees of a large company -, his demonstrations in nursing homes and his initiations in day camps, as well as his weekends. A few days ago, she was dancing in Puy-l’Évêque, a village in the neighboring Lot, about fifty kilometers from her home. The following weekend, it was in La Sauvetat-sur-Lède, a rural town more than sixty kilometers from her home.

Balls every weekend

This is one of the specificities of country and line dance. (also danced online, but with more freedom in the choice of music): country evenings, called balls. For the first weekend of December alone, nearly forty events of this type were planned throughout France.

This is confirmed by Hervé Canonne, project manager in IT but above all president of the French-speaking Federation of Country Dance and Line Dance (FFCLD), double world champion in this discipline. “You can be sure there is at least one ball every weekend in France,” he told BFMTV.com. “And it’s like that all year round”, adds Hervé Canonne, also at the head of a country and line dance association in Versailles.

The two national federations which represent country and line dance – the FFCLD as well as the French Dance Federation – have a little more than 600 clubs spread throughout France. A total which does not take into account the associations not affiliated to these two federations, which would increase their number to 2000. Officially, these two federations also register some 17,500 members.

But country fans, there would be a lot more. In an article published in 2019 by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the political scientist Jérôme Fourquet and the geographer Sylvain Manternach estimate that 9% of the national population – that is to say nearly four million people – “have already practiced or devote themselves to country dance within the framework of a collective structure (club or association ) “, they write. The dancer and sociologist Christophe Appril, author of Prom Worlds, analyzes this craze for BFMTV.com:

“We are not in something ephemeral but in a fundamental movement. But a phenomenon which has passed under the radar.”

A “craze not denied for 25 years”

This excitement, Gérard Simoncello, retired business manager and founder of the FFCLD, testifies to it. “Some festivals, like that of Tarbes (which also includes the Salon du tattoo and the Tarbes poker game, Editor’s note), have become huge events,” he enthuses for BFMTV.com.

This “country spirit” germinated on favorable soil, from the American dream to westerns, through biker gatherings or the comeback of pin-ups and the nostalgia of rockabilly.

“The undisputed enthusiasm for more than twenty-five years for country dance constitutes one of the most obvious manifestations of the influence of American culture on our society”, write Jérôme Fourquet and Sylvain Manternach.

It all dates back to the early 1990s with the opening of the Euro Disney park. A replica of a Texas cowboy saloon offers country dance demonstrations. The success is immediate.

The first clubs are born, multiply and festivals are swarming all over France. The abundance is such that the territory is woven from a country mesh. “I found myself in the Périgord for a country training, I would never have imagined that there would be a club here”, continues Gérard Simoncello.

Followers from “all social backgrounds”

These followers come “from all social backgrounds,” notes Maxence Gerbault, 36-year-old salesperson and country advisor within the French Dance Federation. “Nurses, teachers, lawyers … We meet people we would never have met elsewhere.”

“When you arrive on the track, there are no more differences, everyone is on the same footing”, he sums up.

In their publication, Jérôme Fourquet and Sylvain Manternach indeed evoke a “heterogeneous” public with a “mixed and intergenerational” dimension. Dancers of all ages, including young people – the rate of practicing is even higher among those under 35 than over 35 – making “lie the cliché of an activity that is out of fashion or in decline”.

But a “predominantly popular” audience, they also specify. The two researchers explain that the country has developed “in the shade and away from the big metropolises, with the territories of peripheral France as a favorite place”. Like the National Country Meetings, organized every year in Issoudun, the sub-prefecture of Indre, which has a little less than 12,000 inhabitants.

Dozens of choreographies to master

“Country is not lasso and company”, insists Chantale Germain to BFMTV.com, president of the Friends of the far west, the first French country dance association created thirty years ago in Paris. If it is the equipment – from the belt to the plaid shirt – which partly seduced Jean-Claude Laly fifteen years ago when he discovered country, this retired police force in his seventies claims that the dress traditional is rarefied, in progress as in ball:

“We come to dance as we usually dress or as we went to work,” he remarks for BFMTV.com.

At the head of three country and line dance clubs in Monaco, he organizes seven balls a year, regularly preceded by courses or “workshops” with choreographers. Because you can’t improvise yourself as a country dancer: you have to know the steps.

There are dozens and dozens of different choreographies, listed, codified and prioritized according to their level (beginner, novice, intermediate or advanced). The balls thus display in advance the dances which will be proposed – extracted from what is called in the medium the “common pot”, kind of official catalog of the choreographies proposed in each region.

“Much more than cowboy hats”

For Beatrice Jover, a 47-year-old pharmacy worker, country is also “much more than cowboy boots and hats,” she insists on BFMTV.com. It is his daily life.

This forty-something, president of a club in Vitrolles (Bouches-du-Rhône), gives lessons all week long to her 80 students – able-bodied adults, people with disabilities and children – and organizes a free and open ball in the summer. to the public every Wednesday evening on the Town Hall square. She goes to Marseille on a Saturday afternoon for a workshop, the same evening to Sanary-sur-Mer for a ball. And the following weekend at the festival in Lloret de Mar, Spain.

Events she often goes to with her students. “When there are two events on the same day, it grumbles,” laughs Béatrice Jover. The relationships she maintains with them go well beyond a simple courtesy between a teacher and her students.

“With my dancers, as with the country world in general, it’s like a second family,” she explains.

An aspect spotted by Jérôme Fourquet and Sylvain Manternach. They evoke “a group spirit” and “strong relationships” between the members. “In a society in which traditional collectives (villages, families, factories, unions, parishes, etc.) have disappeared or have crumbled, a whole part of the population is looking for new emotional and social ties.”

A “democratic” dance

Friendliness often comes up in the motivations of dancers. “It’s very warm and practical and that’s what people come looking for,” insists Chantale Germain, of the Parisian association Les Amis du far west.

For the sociologist Christophe Apprill, also author of Slow: Desire and disillusion, This is the very principle of social dances: “We are more in sharing than in artistic performance. The entrance ticket, financial as well as technical, is accessible. We can come alone.”

“There are no prerequisites, you don’t need to be a great dancer to appropriate a few steps”, he summarizes.

This dance also frees from “the apprehension of physical proximity” with his or her partner. This is what Jean-Claude Laly, who manages several clubs in Monaco, expresses. Claiming to be endowed with “two left feet” and having always feared to abuse – involuntarily – his partner, he saw in the country the possibility of dancing alone but in a group. “It’s a democratic dance”, emphasizes Christophe Apprill.

“With country, we make society, we connect with the group without even needing to speak”, analyzes the sociologist. “It’s a very intense moment.”

“We sing, we laugh, we have fun together”

A certain nobility in practice while country would be the target of “devaluing” stereotypes, regrets Christophe Apprill. “Some people see country as the zero level of dance, as something out of date, reserved for rednecks.” A contempt “in the scale of the dances” which would be like a contempt “in the social scale”.

However, he assures us, something “essential” is playing out on the dance floor, “in the order of life and death”. A philosophy summarized in a few words by Véronique Villette:

“When we dance, we don’t think about anything anymore. We sing, we laugh, we have fun together, we forget everything.”