What is Night Club two-step?
Nightclub two-step, sometimes called “California” or “L.A.” two-step, is a slow, soft, romantic dance that has a simple “Quick Quick Slow” (QQS) rhythm with a moderate accent on the downbeat (odd numbered dance counts) and a very strong accent on the backbeat (even numbered dance counts). It’s typically counted “One and TWO, Three and FOUR” and is performed to “light rock” music. The dance was developed in the early 1980’s by Buddy Schwimmer, a prominent California dance pro and has achieved reasonable but not overwhelming popularity in the ballroom community over the last decade or so, in large part because of Buddy’s ongoing, and very successful, effort to popularize it. As yet, however, it still isn’t danced in USABDA ballroom competitions, even as pro-am. The standard position for nightclub two-step is a closed position, but it’s neither the strongly externalized topline of smooth/standard nor the more inward and vertical arm hold of Latin/rhythm; instead, it’s somewhere in between
