Are They Doing the Electric Slide?

When I was studying at Tel Aviv University in 2001, I remember going into a club one evening and walked into a room full of Israelis doing a line dance to a Britney Spears song. I turned to my friend and asked him: “are they doing the electric slide?” He just looked at me as perplexed as I was and we continued to watch this piece of anthropology in the making.

Ask any American 20-something and they will tell you that that electric slide is reserved for Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties. I have never seen any kind of line dance performed in any dance club in the States where you were old enough to be carded at the door.

The other night my boyfriend and I went to what we thought was a ballroom dancing lesson. We had taken a lesson once before and had a lot of fun, so we thought we would try to find one we liked in Tel Aviv. We got to the club at the official start time, 9:00 pm, and were surprised to see quite a few people there. The instructors explained that first we would learn a “simple” dance with one instructor and then learn the cha-cha. This simple dance was none other than a line dance. There I was, 25 years old and dancing around in all four directions to this Madonna song. We had the cha-cha lesson and as the evening got later, more people arrived. By 11:00 pm the place was full and apparently the “evening” was just getting started. The lesson was officially over and the lights were turned down. For the next 30 minutes I watched Israelis dance to song after song with different steps but all in the same line that turns to the same four directions. I even saw the electric slide (but to different music).

By 11:30 I felt that I had had enough of my line dancing experience for one evening and was ready for bed. Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me?