Dancing the Two-Step With a Touch of Swing in Austin
From Donn's Depot, to the Broken Spoke and Sagebrush, you can find a sense of community on the honky tonk dance floors around Austin
“It’s truly a golden era in Austin right now,” says dance instructor, Vanessa Vaught, who operates under the name of Double or Nothing. Dozens of couples crowd her on worn-in wooden floors as she flouts convention with unorthodox footwork.
“I teach 10 to 15 classes a week,” adds Vaught. “We had 80 people at our first class at Sagebrush back in March 2021. It really has not slowed down since then.”
“The main dance we do here is swing in the style of two-step,” says the teacher. “I call it honky tonk two-step. The closest thing it would be to is the jitterbug … It took me a while to wrap my head around it.”
Recounting her novice days, she confesses bewilderment. Classroom moves never squared with what happened out at the bars, so Vaught stopped going to classes and started going out dancing. A renegade of the style now teaching across Austin, she may stand out among instructors, but students hardly mind.
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New partners find growing ranks of like-minded boot scooters on the tight, sweat-steamed dance floors. Since last July, Double or Nothing student Nico Osier has led queer two-step and line-dance events as “Country Fried Dance,” Alongside DJ Boi Orbison, Osier hopes to host regular classes called Bronco at locations they’ll announce on their Instagram page.
Former professional dancer Lea Alix, 92, her husband, Lou, consider themselves swing dancers, but dance all over town. “Donn’s Depot is our favorite because these musicians here are the best you’ll ever see in a lifetime,” says Alix on a night featuring Frank Cavitt and the Honky Tonk Doctors.
Off the sunken dance floor, a student who took the beginner two-step class with Vanessa Vaught said he came especially to hear Erik Hokkanen, while Charlyn Daugherty explained that she had been coming to Donn’s for 50 years, starting in her 20s.
Mireille Bland, of Austin, brought friends in tow from Germany and Portland, “I love how Vanessa Vaught is very clear that anyone can be ‘a follow’ or ‘a lead,” says Bland.
At Sam’s Town Point, the students are a mix of tourists and locals in a pattern that holds across several venues that offer one-hour intros. At the Broken Spoke, Terri White grew hoarse in an attempt to teach whole busloads of visiting young learners giggling in Spanish. To wrangle them, she taught the cotton-eyed Joe. Every teacher has their tricks and tools. After the instruction hour, the dancers take over with their own style and they just keep coming, keeping everyone on their toes.