Ready those dance moves now, now, now, now.
Beyoncé's new country song "Texas Hold 'Em" has fans line dancing all over social media. "I wanna learn country dance now,” one fan posted on X.
The craze has line danced its way around the globe, recently giving us this outstanding rendition posted by the Uganda's Smash Talent Foundation on Instagram.
In this video, which already has 10,000 likes, nine young boys get their groove on as they tackle Western-style dancing with ease. And they look like they're having a great time doing it. The caption reads: "This ain't Texas. It's Uganda."
Performances like this help draw attention to the Foundation that provides education, healthcare, housing, mentorship, clothing and other essential needs for children who have been orphaned, neglected or deprived of basic necessities.
Previously, two other routines to Beyoncé’s song captured the public's attention: One choreographed by friends and backup dancers Dexter Mayfield and Matt McCall, and the other by Brandon Owusu, professionally known as Bizzy Boom. Mayfield and McCall's is up to 41 million views on TikTok and Boom's has almost 7 million views across multiple TikTok posts.
“Y'all they done made a dance for Texas Hold Em. Gimmie like a week to learn this,” a fan said on X, sharing Mayfield and McCall’s routine, which has been performed on live TV.
Fans are also hungering for "just one" official dance, as someone wrote on X, so they can "get in formation," a callback to one of Beyoncé's songs from her 2016 album "Lemonade."
“Family can we please keep the #TEXASHOLDEM Line Dance simple?! I nominate Bizzy Boom’s choreo as tribute,” another fan wrote alongside Boom’s.
Beyoncé released two songs, "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages," Feb. 11 after a surprise announcement during a Super Bowl ad. As the songs suggest, and as fans predicted, the follow up "act ii" to her initial "Renaissance" album will be country.
Boom, a professional choreographer in Toronto, Canada, says Beyoncé "opened up a whole new audience" to country music with just "Texas Hold 'Em," let alone the forthcoming album.
"It's really cool, especially here in Canada, because we don't have a huge country scene among the Black community. But I feel like things like this open it up for us," Boom, who grew up listening to country music, says. “Now they’re seeing someone like Beyoncé, who has such influence on music and culture, creating something like that.”
Anatomy of a viral dance
Mayfield and McCall say their choreographed routine came together in a matter of minutes the day after the Super Bowl.
“I was definitely one of the ones during the Super Bowl, that when she said, ‘Drop the new music’ (in the Verizon ad), I abandoned the game and was like, ‘Wait, where is the new music?’” Mayfield, who was partially raised in Beyoncé’s hometown of Houston, says.
Neither expected their post to go viral, as they regularly post dance videos. Both are professional backup dancers and have performed with the likes of Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez and Dua Lipa.
"We thought it looked fun and we had fun making it up," McCall, who is also from Houston, adds. "That was our intention. It was just to have fun making it up and putting it out there."
Boom says he designed his routine, which came together just as swiftly as McCall and Mayfield's, to appeal to multiple generations.
"I came across 'Texas Hold 'Em' and instantly felt like, 'Oh this would be something really cool to make something up to it that can appeal to people. Doesn't matter is you're 6 years old, 60 years old. I thought I could make something fun for this that people can just do at home with their families'."
"I didn't expect anything," he says. "It caught on and I was like, 'Wow. This is great.'"
Catching Beyoncé's eye
Their viral choreography may not go unnoticed. Beyoncé famously hired one of her "Renaissance" Tour backup dancers, Trinity Joy, after seeing her viral dance video on social media. The job was Joy's first professional gig.
Boom and Mayfield flutter at the thought of Beyoncé potentially contacting them like she connected with Joy.
"I'm really trying to process what that feeling would be, like imagine getting a Zoom call from Beyoncé," Boom says.
"I would probably cry," Mayfield says. "She's just played such an impact on my life personally. My mom passed away when I was 14 and 'Writings On The Wall' is one of those albums that literally got me through that process. She's just everything. She's a hometown hero."
It's not completely out of the question. The singer's mother, Tina Knowles, reshared on Instagram Feb. 23 two older people doing what appeared to be a version of Boom's routine.
"So cuttteeeeeeee!! Dance!!!" Knowles captioned.
How 'Texas Hold 'Em' fits into the history of line dancing
Line dancing may be associated with country music, but it far predates the genre, according to Lisa Biggs, a performance studies scholar and professor at Brown University.
“There are much broader community ethnic dance practices in which people line up and repeat a sequence," Biggs says.
Within the context of the U.S., she says line dances emerged when people, or behaviors, were repressed.
"In the U.S. in particular, there were prohibitions against styles of dance at various times and so people have lined up to dance shoulder to shoulder. African dance traditions often have done that, that precede the introduction of country music,” she says.
Examples of popular line dances outside the country music genre are the Electric Slide, the Cupid Shuffle, the Wobble and the Cha Cha Slide. There are also others generally called hustling in Detroit and stepping in Chicago.
But the beauty of "Texas Hold 'Em," Biggs says, is that it's functioning as a unifier, with people across the country and across generations line dancing together.
"What's interesting about this moment is not only is the song potentially introducing people like the BeyHive to country music, but also these ways of interacting together. People have thought that they are siloed because of their differences but (Dexter and Matt) are a great example of how our ability to move is not restricted," she says.
"When I look at Dexter and Matt there, what I see in their choreography and in their relationship on camera is the sense of ease in the body and ease with each other," she adds. “It becomes like a unifying practice, suddenly.”
