There's often room to know a line dance better

I "know" a lot of line dances, probably fifty, and this is less impressive than it sounds. It's not a complete knowing in all cases. For any given dance, there's lots to know:

• When one sees others doing part of the dance and hears the song, one can join in and carry out the dance.
• Staying on time.
• Ending on the right wall.
• When the song comes on, knowing in body which dance goes with it, when to start, and follow the dance.
• Recognizing when in the song and dance to do the tags, and carrying out the tags.
• Recognizing when in the song and dance to do the restarts and carrying them out.
• Fun styling options, which won't all be on the stepsheet.

I like to model this in four levels of knowing a line dance (plus one level of not-knowing):

• level 0: you don't know it at all; best you can do is follow others' leads and figure it out after a few walls
• level 1: you recognize it when you see it and you can follow along with a few reminders
• level 2: you know how the dance starts and how long the song intro is, and can follow the dance except for tags and restarts
• level 3: you remember the tag steps and that there are restarts and you carry them out when someone cues you with "tag!" "restart!"
• level 4: you remember where the tags and restarts are and you do them without being cued by other dancers

These levels aren't exhaustive — there's no level for styling — but cover a lot of the technical details one can know.

I know a lot of line dances at level 1, fewer at level 2, few at level 3 and a handful at level 4. Some dances have no tags and restarts so levels 2 and 4 are equivalent. I do pretty well with the dances that have no tags or restarts. I don't do so well with the dances that have tags or restarts. I know what the tags are and I know the restarts exist, sometimes even which section (8-count) the restarts happen at the end of, but don't do them unless cued. When level 3 applies to a dance I'm most often at level 3.

The upshot is that having learned a dance to a low level (say level 1), one can learn to enjoy these dances more completely.