Seniors Cut Loose With Old School Moves Set To Bee Gees Classic

Aug 19, 2021 by apost team

There’s something particularly mesmerizing about group performances. Whether it’s the unusual Japanese sport of synchronized walking or Bill Whelan’s well-known “Riverdance” show, when large groups of talented people perform together in perfect harmony, it’s particularly captivating.

A group of enthusiastic dancers in Rome, Italy are making waves across the internet with their coordinated dance skills. The group, Young Hearts Rome, specializes in Zumba and line dancing, performing choreographed routines in an outdoor location somewhere in the Italian capital. What makes their moves even more impressive is the fact that many of the dancers are seniors or middle-aged.

In one of their most popular videos, the Young Hearts spin, clap and boogie to the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever,” taking us back to the 1970s. Since the video was uploaded to YouTube back in August 2020, it has spread like wildfire across the video-sharing platform, earning more than 90,000 likes and 3.8 million views.

Led by an energetic and smiling man in a fedora, the dozen or so dancers move in unison to the sweet sound of disco. They even break out John Travolta’s disco point move, which he popularized in the 1977 film “Saturday Night Fever.”

For fans of the Young Hearts’ uplifting performance, rest assured that this dance crew has a whole library of videos on their YouTube channel. If disco isn’t your thing, this group has a sizzling hot dance routine set to Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” and a variety of more contemporary selections as well. Regardless of which video you watch, here’s the bottom line: you’re going to want to get up from your desk and dance! With that said, what’s the history of line dancing, and how did it make its way all the way to Rome?

According to Dance Facts, we can trace line dancing back to the 1950s when a dance called the Madison spread throughout the U.S. The Madison was followed by the San Francisco Stomp, which came onto the scene in 1961. But it wasn’t until the 1970s when country-western-influenced dance routines became popular. These country-western dance routines — namely the Cowboy Boogie and Walkin’ Wazi — became mainstream thanks to “Saturday Night Fever,” a 1977 Hollywood musical that stars John Travolta. The film, as Dance Facts explains, mixed line dancing with disco dancing, catapulting these genres of dance into the spotlight.

In the 1980s, Travolta once again had a hand in popularizing line dancing with the film “Urban Cowboy,” a romantic western that glorified country culture.

Other line dancing milestones include Billy Ray Cyrus’ song “Achy Breaky Heart,” which mainstreamed country-western music, along with other popular tracks like “Macarena,” “Khaki Country” and “Swamp Thang.” But even if we understand line dancing’s history a bit better, it still might not be completely apparent what differentiates a line dance from any old coordinated routine.

“Line dancing involves people standing in lines and performing dance movements together,” Christy Lane writes in her book about line dancing. “It consists of patterned foot movements that are usually performed to a number of counts per sequence, and then the sequence is repeated. The dances are done one-wall, two-wall, or four-wall.”

What’s interesting about Lane’s definition — and what you might not have known — is that line dances don’t necessarily have to be set to country music. So regardless of whether you like country-western, you’re sure to find other genres of line dance that are sure to fit your tastes. Who would have guessed that there’s dubstep line dancing?

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What do you think of this dance routine? Have you ever participated in a line dance before? Let us know — and be sure to pass this fun and uplifting video on to others.