“Step. STOMP, STOMP. step. STOMP, STOMP.”

Lindsay Tucker tried to force her tennis shoe-clad feet to match the graceful steps of her instructor. The Louisville freshman listened intently as the teacher told her to grapevine, scuff and turn her way to the slick moves of the “Reggae Cowboy.”

An hour later, Tucker smiled as the voice of country singer Keith Urban spilled into the dance studio. She began slapping her hands against her thighs to the beat of Urban’s country twang.

She clapped with every turn, her chestnut ponytail swaying. She mouthed the lyrics as if she was in the front row of a concert: “I wanna love somebody, love somebody like you.”

Tucker is one of nine participants in a weekly country line dancing class in the Preston Center dance studio. The group uses a modern form of a centuries-old dance to strut their way to a healthier lifestyle.

Former competitive dancers and newcomers like Tucker gather on the dance floor every Thursday for six weeks to learn the essential steps to line dancing or polish their skills. The last class period is this Thursday.

“If you like the music, there are some people that don’t just want to sit there and listen to it,” instructor Debbie Brown said.

The class is the first of its kind to be offered at Preston. Calls began coming in about a year-and-a-half ago requesting some type of line dancing, said Alissa Arnold, fitness coordinator in the Health and Fitness Lab.

Brown was chosen to lead the line dancing course after she taught some of the Preston Center staff the “Watermelon Crawl” during her audition – a line dance complete with Charleston kicks, grapevines and slides.

“We all in the office did the audition, and we got kind of winded,” Arnold said.

Brown and her husband David came to Preston on a Thursday evening for the first class session ready to give the small group a workout.

Debbie stood in the front of the Preston dance studio in her worn white tie-up shoes. She kept her black lace-up ropers – a type of cowboy boot – at home that night so she didn’t scuff the light wooden floor of the studio.

David stayed in the back of the room behind the group clustered in the middle. He imitated Debbie’s moves so the class could see the steps when they turned.

Tucker stood at the end of a row of dancers who looked toward the floor-to-ceiling mirrors lining the front room or down at their sneakers.

The class seemed more like a group of young adults shopping in the mall than rugged cowboys. Ponytails replaced straw cowboy hats, tennis shoes replaced leather Durangos and T-shirts replaced flannel button-downs. The distressed jeans were the only item of clothing tying the class to any line dancing stereotype.

But line dancing didn’t begin with cowboys.

Line dancing has been around in different forms throughout history, said John Bennett, a health and physical education professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

“Many countries have dances that have been done in line for forever,” Bennett said.

The earliest documentation of social dances popular in Western Europe is from the Middle Ages. People participated in chain dances, which involved the dancers linking themselves in a line and singing, according to Encarta Online.

The only singing in the line dancing class at Preston was from the speaker system in the back of the room.

The music set the tone for Tucker and her classmates’ first move. Heel splits sent the dancers’ heads bobbing like popcorn as they put their feet together, lifted themselves on the balls of their feet and separated their heels.

Then it got a little tricky.

Debbie Brown began teaching the first line dance of the evening, the “Reggae Cowboy.” She raised her foot behind her knee and effortlessly turned 90 degrees.

The students were wobbly on their turns, unsuccessfully trying to find their center of gravity. Tucker stumbled when she stepped instead of turning, but shuffled back to her spot only to find other classmates who made the same mistake.

Debbie Brown slowly counted the steps in groups of eight, calling out moves to remind the beginners where to go. Despite the initial difficulty, Debbie Brown said line dancing is something anyone can do.

“I think it’s because you know you can teach your feet what to do,” she said.

Country music fans’ fascination with the art swelled with the release of Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart” in the early 1990s. The dance expanded to the rest of the country from its niche in Texas after Cyrus’ song popularized the Achy Breaky line dance, Debbie Brown said.

Despite its low level of difficulty, the dance style started to decline in popularity in the late 1990s. People may have taken more interest in pop music from boy bands than in country, Debbie said.

But the Internet has provided an outlet for line dancers from Kentucky to Europe to connect and share their moves, and line dancing may be on an upswing, Debbie said.

Tucker first became acquainted with country line dancing at a Baptist Student Union hoedown.

“I just fell in love with it,” she said.

The Browns, who have been married for 27 years, have been dancing since they first took courses in 1990. Neither was a big country fan when they began.

“After I learned my first dance, I just wanted to keep learning all the time,” Debbie said.

The couple goes out at least once a week to line dance, and they have about 40 videos at home. They have been teaching since 1996, said Debbie, who is also a secretary at her church.

After two hours, Debbie and David taught the students three line dances – the “Reggae Cowboy,” “Cowboy Cha-Cha” and the “Electric Slide.”

“Y’all are picking this up so fast, y’all are going to be styling,” Debbie Brown said to the class after they learned the “Electric Slide.”

Bowling Green freshmen Betsy Williams and Monica Ferrell decided to take the class because they were both interested in the hobby.

“It’s fun. You can get out there and have a good time,” Williams said.

At the end of line dancing class, students were already making requests to learn dances from popular country songs. “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” was a class favorite. Debbie Brown said the class would have to “Watermelon Crawl” before they could “Badonkadonk.”

It took Tucker and her classmates a few weeks to perfect their skills, and it’s the dance style’s uniformity that continues to appeal to Tucker.

“It’s all planned out,” she said. “I can just enjoy it without anybody looking at me.”