Ocean Drive and the Carolina Shag

Up in the North Myrtle Beach neighborhood of Ocean Drive, they still dance a step that South Carolina made its official state dance. It is called the Carolina shag, a smooth, bluesy shuffle danced in a slot, all nimble footwork and cool upper body, set to slow rhythm and blues that people here simply call beach music. The dance was born along this coast in the nineteen thirties and forties, and its history carries the same fault line that runs through everything on this shore.

The shag grew directly out of African American dances, and in the segregated Carolinas of the late nineteen forties, its modern shape came from young white beachgoers crossing the color line to learn from Black dancers and musicians, a collaboration that was, at the time, forbidden. Much of that happened just up the sand at Atlantic Beach and in the clubs around Ocean Drive. The step spread from these beaches out across the region and the world.

South Carolina made the shag its official state dance in nineteen eighty four, and North Carolina named it its official popular dance in two thousand five. At clubs like Fat Harold's here on Main Street, the music still plays and the slot still fills, older couples gliding through steps their parents learned in a divided time.