Shag club keeps the footwork flowing in Aiken

Oct. 29—South Carolina's state dance — the shag — dates back at least to the 1940s, and local dance instructors Johnny and Judy Turner have been along for most of the ride, since their years as teenagers growing up in Florence.

"That was our pastime in Florence. All the drive-in restaurants there had a cement slab and a jukebox," Johnny recalled. "We had a Teen Town that had a jukebox with all the songs in it, and a great floor there, and we'd shag there. It was just what we did."

It's still what they do, normally once or twice a week, and Aiken Shrine Club is their traditional base of operations, as the site where they give weekly lessons on Monday evenings and take part in a dance Friday evenings, all in association with the CSRA Shag Club.

Johnny, when asked to put the dance into words, responded, "It's a very smooth dance, and it's a lazy man's jitterbug. There's just a lot of footwork. There's no easy way to describe it, except that."

Judy commented, "We have met the best people in the world that we never would have met anywhere, and so we have friends all over. It's just a fun thing to do and a fun group to be a part of. It's like a shag family."

Similar clubs are spread among the Carolinas and Georgia and at least as far afield as Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia.

The Turners are both retired, and their professional backgrounds are in education (for Judy) and men's clothing (for Johnny), but the past several years have had them getting acquainted with dozens of people looking to develop or sharpen their dancing skills, often matched to such creations as "Sixty Minute Man," "Carolina Girls" and "With This Ring."

"One thing — we love the dance," said Johnny, a member of the shag club's board of directors. "We love the music, and the best thing about it is, we meet so many nice people when we're in there, and we love teaching it, and it's just been good for us."

Courses run for six weeks at a time, with emphasis on avoiding collisions with major holidays.

Major annual events include a three-day party in March in Augusta: the CSRA Shag Classic. "We have like 300-400 people ... Columbia has three clubs up there, and they have three parties going on up there at different times of year, and Charleston's the same way. All the clubs pretty much have a set weekend that the party's at," Johnny said.

North Augusta resident Rodney Williams is also familiar with the local layout, as the CSRA Shag Club's president — a role in which he has served multiple times before.

The club, he said, started taking shape in 1985 and was chartered in 1986, and Williams was on board from day one. He was teaching a shag class at the time and got expressions of support from eight other dancers, and by the time the club was chartered, it had 51 people on board.

"We started with eight people and at times have had 500 members," he said. "Now we're around 300-350 — something like that."

The minimum age for club membership is 21, due to alcohol being served at club events, and membership is spread about equally between the two states, Williams said.

Dancers on the western edge of the Savannah River have a convenient option to consider, with the CSRA Shag Club having an Augusta site to offer: The Shag Shack, at 119 Davis Road.

Augusta resident Julia Griffin shed some light on the club's membership. "We have a few that are younger, and most of them are retired," she said.

"It's the South Carolina state dance, so more people over there know it than in Georgia," she added, noting that get-togethers are held in a variety of locations "up and down the coast," along with venues in Kentucky and Chattanooga.

"We want it to keep going forever and ever," Johnny said, noting that outreach efforts to the younger generations include the Junior Shag Association, with membership restricted to ages 20 and below. Activities include the gatherings of Junior SOS, a youthful associate of the Society of Stranders, an organization that sponsors a variety of multi-day dance events throughout the year. The host sites are all in North Myrtle Beach.

The shag is also North Carolina's official popular dance and has been described by that state's legislature as having "evolved from the jitterbug and jump blues of the big band era," and as a form of swing dancing. Events on the near horizon for people in the Tarheel State include a free junior shag workshop (participation limited to ages 20 or younger) set for Nov. 5 in China Grove, near Salisbury, with sponsorship by the Junior Shag Dance Team.

Details on CSRA Shag Club events are at 803-221-2361. Among the club's current leaders, in addition to Williams, are Brenda Taylor, vice president; Debbie Kasper, treasurer; and Cindy Smith, secretary.