There are two sides to the dance known as steppin'. "It's smooth, elegant; it has class to it, sophistication," says Tony Owens, who runs the Las Vegas Steppers Club. "It can define how you carry yourself, how you walk."
Developed in Chicago in the 1970s, steppin' has its roots in black dance styles from the 1930s, like the jitterbug, that were adapted to fit with a generation of mellow R&B. It shares some of the turns of salsa and counts of country and western, but the light footwork and throwaway cool attitude are all its own. Steppers slide and glide across the floor so effortlessly, one move curving into another, that the dance is almost supernaturally smooth.
But then there's the other side. Some call it a quiet aggression. It's like an uncoiled power at the heart of what seems like a breezy, easy dance. It's almost ... dangerous. Or at least dangerously smooth, as if steppers could pick your pocket or break your heart from the other side of the room, and you'd never know until it was too late.
Fueled by R. Kelly's monster 2004 hit "Step in the Name of Love," steppin' has been branching out from its longtime home in Chicago for years, and making inroads in places as far-flung as Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Having seen his club grow in seven years to more than 500 members, and with a growing number of venues in town for people to step, Tony Owens has a simple goal: "We want to be the premiere steppers club in the U.S."
Tony Owens, who's 37, grew up on Chicago's South Side, where everyone stepped, but he was more into playing and promoting house music. And he knew he always wanted to leave town. "It didn't matter where. I just knew I wanted to go. There was something bigger and better." When he graduated high school in 1988, some folks he knew were heading to Las Vegas, and he came with them.
He went to work at KFC and rose to become a manager, then moved on to manage several Starbucks shops before starting a coffee concession at McCarran, which he later sold to Starbucks. During these years he also competed as a bodybuilder and power lifter. In 1996 he received his promoters license in Nevada and started Big Tony! Productions and began hosting house parties. When asked about the exclamation point, he tells me, "I put an exclamation on everything I do."
A few years later, a cousin suggested that he start hosting steppers sets. Owens wasn't a fluent stepper, but he was a quick study. In 1999 he formed the Las Vegas Steppers Club. "I was tired of going to the club to listen to music that wasn't for me," he says. Owens wanted something more mature and laid-back, something that echoed the velvet sensuality of Al Green or Marvin Gaye or Teddy Pendergrass.
But more than dance, he envisioned an organization that at its roots would be a social community. The group's motto became "One Love One Family." The Steppers Club routinely hosts parties and barbecues, conducts a group prayer after each class and even helps build affordable housing.
Owens' first steppin' event was at the Cheyenne Saloon, a big country-western joint at Cheyenne and Rancho, and over the next few years he hosted events at the Skylight, at PT's Pubs, at the Elks. Some were successful. Some weren't. He just kept pounding. In 2003 he started DJing at the Elks, and the owners gave him a small room in the back to teach steppin' lessons. Turnout was so-so until Owens decided not to charge for the lessons, and the numbers picked up. Then R. Kelly's song hit the airwaves. Owens slaps his hands. "That was it! I mean, I had a line out the door. That song really put us over the top." Soon after, he had 60 people in one class, people who had never done steppin' before in their lives. He so impressed his future wife, Barbie, that she composed a poem for him called "The Man That Dances in the Night."
Another stepper in town, Mark Melody, started No Half Steppin' in 2003, though he had been steppin' in Vegas as far back as the mid-'90s. He now hosts a weekly radio show on KCEP 88.1-FM dedicated to oldies, which features an hour of steppers music. "It's here and it's spreading," Melody says. "Once people start to realize what it is, they cling to it."
The dance traces its roots back to the 1930s, with the jitterbug, but its more immediate predecessor was a variation of the jitterbug popular in Chicago called the bop, a swift dance full of twists and turns. During the late '50s and into the '60s, with the rise of Motown, the bop gradually slowed down. By the '70s, youngsters were dancing a laid-back version they called new bop. Drawing from another popular dance called the Walk, where partners held each closer together than with the bop, the new style featured couples standing in front of each other and also side-to-side, and holding two hands instead of one. Steppin' emerged out of the tension between the young style of new boppers and the more traditional moves of their elders, who were trying to adapt. The name itself came into vogue sometime in the late '70s or early '80s.
"Steppin' was a man's thing," says Pete Peterson, the 62-year-old president of LA-based Eve Jim Records. Peterson hails from Detroit, another center for steppin', and he's been at it for 50 years. "The men always were highlighted in terms of how they performed."
Low-income African-Americans stepped, and as such it's easy to draw a parallel between the male steppers' cool and the cool posing of pimps. "That's what a lot of the pimps did, hung around with the steppers," says Las Vegas Steppers Club instructor Freddie Ponder. "Pimps are cool, laid-back. They don't sweat. "
"The guys into pimping were really great dancers," says Peterson. "One of the ways of attracting women was presentation of style, attitude and dress." But despite the links, Chicago DJ Steve Brewer, who came up steppin' in the early '60s, notes that the dance came out of a poor milieu of which pimps were just part of the mix, not the defining element.
Chicago began hosting hugely popular steppin' competitions in the early '90s, and that, along with a lot of local radio exposure, helped push its appeal into the black middle and upper classes. Now, says Brewer, "you got Ph.D.s and college professors dancing with high school dropouts."
In the new millennium, steppin' is slowly finding common ground with hip-hop. Ten years ago, you couldn't find hip-hop being played at a steppers set—which was emerging, especially among older dancers, as a refuge from the bling and noise of hip-hop. But as younger people are beginning to step more and more, they're steppin' to the music they know and love.
It's still a tense relationship, and DJs have to program their music carefully, lest half their crowd walks out. Old-schoolers may hate hip-hop, but it may be the key to the dance busting into the mainstream consciousness. Still, for now, steppin' draws its strength as a dance for grown-ups, where well-dressed men and women who know a thing or two about life can come together and cut loose.
For now, steppers meet for class in a large storefront in a dilapidated shopping center in North Las Vegas, sharing space with a karate school. On the walls are posters for the many points on the body susceptible to karate chops and blows.
People straggle in, but within the hour on most Thursday nights the space is packed with a few dozen steppers, mostly in their 40s and above, though some are younger. Most of the dancers are regulars, but there are always new faces. Many come on a whim, or because a friend recommended the club. After all, there aren't that many places for black people over 30 in Las Vegas.
Some time before 7, Owens stands before the class. He begins by teaching the crowd the eight-count basic pattern. It's a pair of three-step moves that go forward and back, plus a two-step shuffle that, once you start to pick up your feet fast enough, makes you feel like a playa. Owens used to teach a six-count figure, where dancers cross their feet, but it was tougher to learn. Anyway, no one does the six in Chicago.
But the counts are only starting points. Old-schoolers will tell you there are no counts. "Days when we came along there was no such thing as a class," says Brewer. "You went to clubs, watched the moves, went home and practiced."
"We'll catch a part of the song, and we'll ride with it," says Peterson. "It's all in the rhythm and the flow. The majority of us never knew how to count to begin with. It's all about connecting with the song itself. Song will dictate what you do and how you do it."
And, true, what Owens often repeats in one class is that, "Steppin' is a flow ... steppin' is a feeling." All you have to do is find the beat, and you can manage. You can fake the funk.
"Don't feel bad if you don't get it today," Owens tells the class. "I'm gonna be calling some crazy stuff, some crazy terms. Try to keep up." He leads the group in a series of moves, which some people know, others scramble to pick up and a few are left to shake their heads at. There's good spirit and energy as the speakers crank out one silky R&B jam after another. Exaggerated foot slams help people find the beat. Dance studios can sometimes be intimidating for newcomers, but here, everyone is welcome.
"You have to connect," Owens tells the steppers. "You can't do it by yourself. One person can't look good in this dance."
Owens' style is very powerful and authoritative. Instructor Freddie Ponder, on the other hand, has an elegant and light touch. Ponder had been dancing salsa with his wife, Sheila Johnson, for years, when her sister told them about a steppers club in Los Angeles. They went for a lesson. They saw the eight-count step. Freddy was impressed by how cool and elegant the teachers were, by how little they sweated.
In other partner dances, the men lead and the women follow, but a man is only successful when he gives his partner room to be creative, dazzling and beautiful. But with steppin', the roles get flipped around a bit. True, the men still lead, but now it is the women who are primarily responsible for keeping the time. This is a dance where men are expected to be flashy, to draw attention to themselves. To showboat.
Sometimes "they forget what they're doing," says one dancer, Diana Cobb.
Cobb, known among the group as Lady Di, joined the steppers club eight months after her husband passed away, and found a new family. "If they see you 15 times a day, they'll hug you 15 times a day." The group helped her turn her life around. She even joined them on an outing to help build an affordable house in Pahrump earlier this summer.
Ponder's wife, Sheila Johnson, grew up dancing. Her father was a lindy-hopper. She studied ballet and modern. She danced salsa for 15 years. "This is a lot calmer," she explains. "Salsa is fine. But all of a sudden this is a little smoother and cooler. But there are some of the same hand turns, some of the same steps, some of the same counts and beats, but slower."
The dance's popularity is catching on everywhere. In Puerto Rico, Ponder and Johnson met a couple from Spain who complimented them on how well they stepped.
"What do you know about steppin'?" Ponder asked
"We have steppin' in Madrid," came the response.
"No you don't," said Freddy.
"They got playas in Madrid," the guy said, and Freddy got it. They must have steppers in Madrid.
The future of steppin' in Vegas seems assured. Events are held regularly at clubs like the Seven Seas and the Mayan. Melody plays a weekly steppers set of music on 88.1 and is trying to bring a steppers competition to Sin City for next year's NBA All-Star Game. Owens is weeks away from moving the organization into more spacious quarters on Losee Road.
Given the current popularity of ballroom dancing, it might seem that steppin' is poised to glide into the mainstream. As Johnson notes, black dances like the lindy hop were taken by white Americans into the ballroom. It remains to be seen whether steppin' has that kind of crossover appeal. Brewer doesn't believe old-school steppin' will catch on in the mainstream—it's too smooth, too relaxed, but he is more optimistic about the newer wave of steppin'—faster, flashier, infused with the soul of hip-hop.
"Once some people get it," he says, "they hold onto it for life."