When I started line dancing around 2004/2005 it was more or less something I stumbled into. Some of my family members had started in a beginner class near my home and at one point I was supposed to meet them afterwards. I arrived early and tried faking a few dances after which I was hooked. I have always loved music and as soon as hear it I have never been able to stand still. With line dancing it was possible to dance without a partner and later on if you missed a class you could always read the stepsheet and still be up to date. These are some of the aspects that drew me to line dancing.

I joined the beginner class but quickly ended up in all the classes I could take near and far. About two years in I was persuaded to go to a one-day event a bit further away. Here I met Niels Poulsen who was teaching and I saw a new side of line dance. I started going to his Newline classes and went to my first weekend event, The Danish Newliners’ event in Fåborg in 2007.

Of course I did not know that many dances but the weekend was just so much fun and I knew that it would definitely not be the last of its kind. During this event I met Big Dave and his wife Pauline who informed me that they were holding a similar event in Leeds later on in the year. This was my first foreign event and I have been going there ever since. As time went on the number of events per year have increased. During these various events I have met a lot of choreographers and great dancers who I greatly admire for their skills on the dance floor and really like for their personalities.

As said I can never stand still when I hear music which has led to people saying I should try my hand at choreography. I never thought I would be able to do that, but during the early hours of a Fåborg event I was goofing around to a song and Jannie Tofte Andersen asked which dance I was doing. We talked back and forth and she convinced me to try choreographing with her. The result was our first dance Take Out. I thought it was fun making your own dances, hitting the beats and lyrics in the music the way you thought they should be hit. It is definitely something I think I will continue doing and if someone picks up the dance and likes it well that is just the icing on the cake.

I had known about line dancing competitions for a while but I only recently found out that you could compete with your choreographies too. I thought it could be kind of fun to try and enter at Worlds 2011 and if nothing else I would at least get to dance and have fun like at a regular event. The thought of winning a category, let alone the overall, never occurred to me. I was completely speechless and so grateful. On top of it all the prizes this year were incredible and I am really looking forward to be going to the USA for the first time where I even get the opportunity to teach!

What the future holds after that no one knows but I will continue dancing for as long as I possibly can and I am looking forward to all the great events, parties, dances and people that I am sure I will attend, enjoy, learn and meet. See you on the dance floor!