Country Line Dances

Lizzy Caplan Line Dances Through Latest Queens Of Country Trailer

We’ve been waiting for Lizzy Caplan to blast into the stratosphere, the reach a level currently occupied by the likes of Anne Hathaway, Natalie Portman or Jennifer Lawrence. We noticed Caplan way back on Freaks and Geeks , then watched her excel in Tina Fey’s Mean Girls , Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield and the vastly underrated cable-TV comedy Party Down . Despite some interesting and exciting work, Caplan has yet to fully take off. And her latest picture, Queens of Country , looks like it will follow the same trajectory – very strange and probably very funny, but too surreal for a mainstream audience. The film’s first full trailer is below:



Caplan plays Jolene Gillis, a line-dancing country music fanatic who finds an iPod stuffed with country music staples. Convinced that the owner is her soul mate, Jolene sets out to find him … much to the chagrin of her current boyfriend. Rance (Ron Livingston). Her journey somehow finds room for a dominatrix, a cross-dressing Joe Lo Truglio, and a nearly unrecognizable Maynard James Keenan, best known as the singer for Tool.

You see? Too surreal for a mainstream audience. But co-directors Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke do appear to have found a comfortable resting spot somewhere between Christopher Guest and the Coen Brothers, which isn’t a bad place to be when you are gently spoofing an offbeat community of unique individuals. “Who are you, Mr. Lost iPod Man?” Caplan asks at the trailer’s close. We’ll find out when this comedy opens at some point in 2012.

Urban Cowboy

For the past few months, a couple of teachers that I work with at Fusion Dance Centre have invited me to go country line dancing with them. Every week they’d talk about the great time they had and how they were looking forward to going back the following weekend. In my mind were images of that “Achy Breaky Heart” song playing nonstop while senior citizens took careful steps back and forth in ten gallon hats.  I could not understand how Nicole and Cat, my beautiful, twenty-something, country line dancing co-workers, were having such a fantastic time week after week. I packed away my preconceived notions, put on my best Urban Cowboy duds, and hightailed it with them to the country line dancing spot.

When I arrived, there was a female instructor with about twenty to thirty people learning a routine on the huge dance floor. She wore a microphone (and boots of course) and there were large video screens to follow along with in case you could not clearly see her. Nicole, Cat, and I took to the dance floor to start learning the moves.

We were guided through a short series of steps that turned and faced different directions only to begin again, similar to party dances like the Electric Slide. When the class was ready, music came on and we danced the steps, in each direction, for the duration of the song. Some people were concentrating very hard, others were laughing, and a few others were adding their own level of flair. As the song ended, everyone clapped and the instructor gave us a small break before the next dance started.

As Nicole, Cat, and I waited for the next dance to begin, the teacher came over to me and said, “I see you pick up the dances very quickly. Can you be my assistant for the next one?” Let me clarify! I don’t believe that I was chosen because I was God’s gift to country line dancing. Rather, I stood out as the only 200-pound black man on the dance floor smiling and moving in the right direction. Of course I accepted the role and with that, we began learning the next routine.

This next dance was an Intermediate level dance, a little longer and more complex than the previous one. After I knew the steps, I went to stand in the back so that the crowd could follow my feet when we turned around. The process was the same. We would practice together, the music would come on and we’d perform until the end of the song. Take a peek at us in action.

After the dance lessons ended, the free dance period started. There was no instructor but music videos played on the screens and over the sound system. An announcer called out dances by name and those who knew them, or wanted to try, went to the dance floor. Those who did not want to dance flanked the floor, drinking, talking, and watching.