8th May 2026

Welcome back everyone to our 12-2pm afternoon class at Chirk Parish Hall.

We did recap teaches on some of our previous dances today, and new/in-depth teaches – Country Walkin’ to Walkin’ The Country by Keith Urban & The Ranch, and went back over Ziggy to I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Ziggy in tha House, as well as a quick-fire teach of House of Bamboo (This City Is Ours) to House of Bamboo by Andy Williams.

The new dances introduced the following dance steps/methods:

• Coaster Step
• Heel Swivels
• Lindy / Side Shuffle Rock Back
• Monteray 1/4 Turn

The list below gives you links to a website called Copperknob. This is one of the leading websites for line dancing and gives choreographers a place to share their dances with us – dancers and instructors alike. Each link will take you to the page with the stepsheet (I am happy to talk anyone who wants to learn more through ‘reading’ a stepsheet) along with videos to both the ‘standard’ or typical music the dance was originally set to and videos of the dances. More information about Copperknob and the contents on these pages can be found at the bottom of this page.

Dance-List: Tonight we danced the following dances:

Each week we will recap as many of our original dances as possible, as well as introducing at least one new full teach. Next week our new teach will be House of Bamboo (This City Is Ours) choreographed by Maggie Stevenson to the song House of Bamboo by Andy Williams as promised. We will also pick up a new dance to two track options – California Funk. First of all we will dance the ‘California‘ option of the dance to California Blue by Roy Orbison; then we will dance it again to the ‘Funk‘ option of the dance to Uptown Funk (feat. Bruno Mars) by Mark Ronson. You can find YouTube links to the music and a demo of the first dance below, we do not have any demo videos for California Funk yet.

Don’t forget that we would like recommendations from all of you for a nominated charity for the class. Please click here for the nomination form to submit your nominated charity. The charities you submit can be small or big, local or national. We will put the submissions to either a vote or pull one from a hat at the end of April once enough class members have had the opportunity to submit their charities.

Welshpool Country Music Festival Coach Daytrip: We now have prices for the trip to Welshpool – to include the festival ticket and the coach travel it will be £55. We will have pickup points in Rossett, Wrexham Town Centre and Chirk. I need to start taking deposits from those of you wanting to go to secure the coach and tickets.

We still have seats available so get in touch if you know anyone else that would like to come along with us. With some more people we can then get a discount on the entry ticket for the festival. For this you can happily bring along family members, kids, friends from outside of the class, etc. and it should be a really good day out for all. There will be plenty of dancing, stalls with various goods on them (country and cowboy related and other types of goods), food and refreshments stalls, and absolutely fantastic live music lined up for the day.

Videos for next week’s teaches:

1. House of Bamboo (This City Is Ours)

Song: House of Bamboo – Andy Williams:

And a demo video for the dance – House of Bamboo (This City Is Ours), choreographed by Maggie Stevenson:

2. California Funk

SONG – California Option: California Blue – Roy Orbison:

SONG – Funk Option: Uptown Funk (ft. Bruno Mars) by Mark Ronson:

We do not have a demo video for this dance yet. Once we have done this a while if anyone would be happy to be included in a ‘class-style demo video’, like the ones we share here, please let me know.

We have also put a couple of YouTube Playlists together for your viewing. The first is a playlist of demo videos for the dances – we will add to these in the order we introduce the new dances. The next is a playlist of the music videos for the tracks we use for the dances as these will not necessarily be the track that the dance was originally choreographed to (tracks without the asterisk in the dance diary list above) – again, we will add to these in the order we introduce the new dances or the new tracks.

In addition to the dances we have coming up, K’s Kicks have just published their first choreographed dance on Copperknob. The song is: Honky Tonk Hallelujah – KKicksCountry:

And I managed to put together a demo video for the dance Honky Tonk Hallelujah – big thank you to the team at Chirk Parish Hall for letting me use the hall to record the demo; it is a great space for private hire events. The dance is beginner level and has one tag and one restart in it – we will do this in class soon:

Copperknob Notes:

The stepsheet links in the dance diary table above will take you through to Copperknob – most line dancers consider this site their ‘bible’ as it contains all of the published line dances danced out there.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Copperknob is completely FREE to use (unless you download the app, which there is a small upfront fee to download from your preferred play/app store). If you click on anything in Copperknob which tries to charge you for anything then you have clicked on one of the adverts within the site that helps to fund the site (helping keep it free of charge) – just hit your back button and you will be fine. One of the adverts, confusingly, does prompt you to “watch video” – on your phone, please scroll to the bottom of the dance instructions to find the actual uploaded videos to go with the dance; on your computer/laptop these videos will be on the right-hand side.

Song titles marked with * in the above list show that we have danced to the original (or one of the tracks considered original) music set to the choreography, otherwise we have danced to a song swap.

What you can find on Copperknob:

• The dance stepsheet – these can take a bit of getting used to when it comes to reading them to understand the steps. Usually a top line of each section (often in bold text) will summarise the steps included in that section, followed by a breakdown of each individual step. If anyone would like me to go through any stepsheets with them, please catch me in a break.
• Details of the dance – by this I mean:
  • The level of the dance – for most of our classes we will only be concentrating on anything from these levels:
    • Absolute Beginner
    • Beginner (including Easy Beginner & High Beginner)
    • Improver – NOTE: this will be a long way off, however, I have included this as a small selection of the older Improver dances would now be considered Beginner or High Beginner level dances based on tags and/or restarts becoming more common, even in Absolute Beginner dances.
  • How many walls the dance is – the number of different directions we start the dance from
  • How many counts the dance is – how many steps for a complete wall of the dance
  • The choreographer and when the dance was submitted to Copperknob
  • Details to the suggested or original music track used for the dance, along with the artist it is by and which version (where there are multiple versions widely available).
• A YouTube link to the music track – this is usually to the original track that the dance was choreographed to. Sometimes there will be multiple ‘original’ options specified in the sheet, so there may be more than one Music video link.
• A YouTube link(s) to a Demo video – dances that have received overwhelming responses and reactions to them will often have multiple demo videos accompanying them, mostly recorded by various line dancing classes and group, and sometimes even by other choreographers themselves. A demo video is simply the dance being performed/danced with no other explanation. Some may have the steps called out, but most are often just a demonstration of the dance. Where a demo video has been uploaded by the choreographer these are often the best videos to watch first as they know the steps inside out – they wrote them! However, as you find yourself watching more and more demo videos you will start to pick up on regular contributors and find the ones with a style that you like most.
• A YouTube link(s) to a Teach video – unlike the demo videos, any videos that state Teach on the description will also break down and give instruction on how to learn and dance the dance. I will caution that in rare cases a Demo video can get uploaded as a Teach video, but usually if you check the video all of the way through this is because some upload combined videos. I particularly like the format AB Coasters use where they will demo the dance for the first part of the video, then follow it with a breakdown of the steps.

Tips for getting the most out of Copperknob:

• Sign up for an account – it’s FREE. You can get so much more out of Copperknob when you are logged in.
• Create lists – lists can help you organize dances in the Copperknob site. Think of it like a bookmarks bar on your favourite internet browser – except it is nicely self-contained within Copperknob. Handy, right?
  • Once you are logged in, click on “My Lists“.
  • You will have a “Favourites” created by default, but if you want multiple lists (e.g. I set up “Learned”, “Learning”, and “Want to Learn” lists) you can create more by clicking on the “Create New List” button.
  • If you create a new list it will add to your list of lists as “*New List*” – click on the cog settings icon and you can change the name of your list. You can even change the list colour if you want.
  • Once you have created your list you can then start filling it. In each step sheet there is a star icon underneath the votes labelled as “Save” – click on this icon, or the word “Save”, and tick the box for the list you want to save the stepsheet into.
  • You can save stepsheets in multiple lists.
  • To access your list, click on “My Lists” at the top of the screen (or in the 3 horizontal lines/cheeseburger menu button on mobile views) and click on the list you want to open.
• Vote – choreographers put a lot of work into creating their dances for us to enjoy. If you like a dance that we are doing, please show it some love by adding your vote (out of 5 stars) to the Copperknob system and help their dance to remain in the line dancing charts for others to enjoy. You need to be logged in to be able to vote.
• Comment – if you really like a dance the choreographers love to hear this. There is a comment section at the bottom of each stepsheet screen (you may have to scroll past a lot of videos for very popular dances) where you can let the choreographer and others know you like it. Sometimes you will see questions asked in this section about specific steps in the dance, or suggestions for song swaps for the dance.