How My Dance Came to be Written
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Up until early 2005 it had never occurred to me that I would ever be a choreographer, but after first hearing the song Tennessee Birdwalk on Internet radio in November 2004, I felt it would be an ideal song to set a dance to.
I searched the internet to see if a dance had already been choreographed to that song and I couldn't find one ..... so I decided to have a go myself. Having never choreographed a dance before, I was learning as I went along. I found it fairly easy to work out some suitable steps to fit the music, but then the hard part ..... how did I put them down on paper in a format that other dancers could understand?
I studied other dance scripts to see how it was done and, by following the formats used for the step sequences I was using, I was able to build my stepsheet. I then took it to one of my teachers to see if he could understand what I had written and he confirmed that he could.
The next step was to post my dance script up on a couple of the major line dance websites. I also e-mailed it to a number of teachers in the hope that they would teach it. This strategy paid off and, within a month, a teacher from Yorkshire became the first one to teach my dance. She also posted it on her website.
Since then, my dance has been taught in at least twelve counties in the UK and at least two states in the USA .... and it has also reached Rotterdam in the Netherlands and, more recently, Budapest in Hungary. And these are only the places that I know about. On some occasions I only found out about places it was being danced months after they learnt it.
If I ever succeed in getting it published in the line dance magazines it will encourage even more people to learn it. I have received some really good feedback from some of the teachers and dancers who have been enjoying it .... see Reviews.
Throughout this time Jack & Misty were kept fully informed about my dance and its progress. I was delighted when they adopted it as the official line dance for their website. With their full co-operation, and with the help of Henk, a webmaster from the Netherlands, I was encouraged to try and build my own website. This was linked to Jack & Misty's website.
That original website was online for a couple of years. However, due to my hosting company changing hands, which resulted in my domain name lapsing, that website went off-line. I decided to start from scratch again and build a new website.
But, over time, technology moves on. These days, people frequently look at websites on their smartphones and tablets, but that older website was not responsive. In other words, the pages didn't adjust to the smaller screen size. This meant it was necessary to scroll endlessly from side to side to read the text. This made it hard work and not a pleasant experience. Also, only half, or less, of a picture could fit on the screen, so more scrolling. In addition, there were security issues that were not addressed on that older website.
So here is the new website. I hope you enjoy it.
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Places Tennessee Birdwalk has been danced:
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In the UK:
Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Essex, Anglesey,
Gwynedd, Powys, Berkshire, Merseyside, Devon, Greater Manchester.
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In Europe:
Rotterdam in the Netherlands
Budapest in Hungary
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In the USA:
Washington, DC
Sanford, Florida
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There may well be other places I do not know about. Some of the places listed here had been dancing it for several months before I found out about it.
Last updated 2018