More than 500 dancers from across the country packed the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia from July 30 to August 2 for Hoedown South, the city's first queer country dance convention. The four-day event featured line dance contests, country two-step competitions, and over 50 hours of workshops spread across three rooms, all organized by a local nonprofit that started with a handful of people trying to two-step somewhere safe.
That nonprofit is DanceOut Atlanta, which co-hosted the convention alongside the All Y'all Queer Dance Society, according to AJC.com. The convention covered a wide range of styles beyond line dancing and two-step, including West Coast swing, nightclub two-step, waltz, and East Coast swing, and even featured a performance from The Cowgays. Terence Ng, a DanceOut Atlanta founder, moderated the dance competitions, and the soundtrack leaned into genre staples like Tammy Wynette.
The gathering wasn't without a hiccup. Fire sprinklers unexpectedly went off in a nearby hotel room at the Crowne Plaza, forcing attendees to evacuate. Dancers were back inside and moving again within thirty minutes, according to the same report.
From Weekly Classes to a National Convention
DanceOut Atlanta began in 2018 and now draws about 200 attendees to its weekly classes, held Tuesdays at the Eagle Atlanta on Piedmont Avenue and Wednesdays and Thursdays at Heretic Atlanta on Cheshire Bridge Road. The organization is a nonprofit supported by its attendees, offering free country dance lessons meant to create a welcoming and safe space for queer people. Its membership spans different ages, races, and sexual orientations, per AJC.com's reporting.
Leadership grew alongside the organization's ambitions. Lead instructor Terence Ng joined in 2018, and co-directors Brian Weathers and Joseph Winkler came on board in late 2025 to begin laying the groundwork for Hoedown South, according to Atlanta Magazine. DanceOut Atlanta now plans to make Hoedown South an annual convention and eventually hire a full-time employee just to manage it.
Dancers Find Belonging on the Floor
For 32-year-old Kristina Hopkins, DanceOut Atlanta offered a greater sense of belonging, a feeling she first encountered after discovering the group in Washington, D.C., before attending its Atlanta events. Joshua Howard, who attended Emory University and studied preconceived notions about country music in religious studies, said the genre's culture can offer more honest representation. Shirley Adams, a DanceOut Atlanta member in her 80s, rounds out a community that stretches across generations, the outlet's reporting notes.
Decades of Queer Country Culture in Atlanta
Atlanta's queer country dance scene didn't start with DanceOut Atlanta. Its roots trace back to February 1987, when Deana Collins opened Deana's One Mo' Time on Cheshire Bridge Road, later transforming it in 1992 into Hoedowns, the city's first full-time LGBTQ+ country-western dance bar, according to the Georgia LGBTQ Historic Context Statement. After Hoedowns and another venue called 3-Legged Cowboy closed in 2011, Heretic Atlanta picked up the tradition, launching its dedicated Thursday country night that September — the same Thursday slot DanceOut Atlanta uses today at 2069 Cheshire Bridge Road NE.
The Eagle Atlanta, host of the Tuesday classes, carries its own history of resilience. The bar reopened at its current Midtown address, 1492 Piedmont Ave. NE, in October 2022 after more than 30 years at 306 Ponce de Leon Ave., a site designated a city historic landmark in 2020, per 11Alive. DanceOut Atlanta's presence at both venues links today's classes directly to Atlanta's earlier gay country-western bars, which stretch back nearly four decades, and the group has expanded its queer country dance events in the years since the AIDS crisis.
A Pop Culture Boost and a National Circuit
DanceOut Atlanta instructors have pointed to an unlikely accelerant behind the recent surge in interest: Beyoncé. Her 2024 album Cowboy Carter and earlier Renaissance project gave a noticeable post-pandemic boost to attendance, instructors told Atlanta Magazine, by making it more comfortable and visible to combine country music with queer identity.
Atlanta's scene is also part of something bigger. DanceOut Atlanta connects local dancers to a national circuit of similar gatherings, including Hoedown in the Dunes in Saugatuck, Michigan, Wrangler Weekend LA in Los Angeles, and Fog Town Hoedown in San Francisco. That circuit runs alongside longer-standing governing networks such as the International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs, which coordinates annual conventions including the Reno Hoedown, according to Big Apple Ranch.
What's Next for DanceOut Atlanta
The momentum from Hoedown South hasn't slowed down. DanceOut Atlanta has scheduled expanded community programming for August, including a special event at My Sister's Room, Atlanta's long-running lesbian bar, featuring mechanical bull riding alongside two-step and line dance instruction, according to a post on the group's Facebook page. The organization also plans to bring back a community class as it looks toward turning Hoedown South into a fixture on the national calendar.
