Inside the red brick Eastern Market building on a Saturday in late June, a troupe of foxtrotters and two-steppers encircled a dance floor.
They were eagerly waiting for a song to start so they could strut their stuff. But they weren’t professional dancers; by day, they were corporate professionals or some of the most underrated creatives in the D.C. area.
A country song began and they took to the floor in pairs. The clicking of cowboy boots and the whoops of onlookers filled the room.
At D.C. Rawhides, everyone is welcome — previous dance experience is not required, but the confidence to dance in front of others is. For more than a decade, the organization has been focused on creating space for the LGBTQ+ community to dance.
Terry Chasteen, a co-organizer of the local nonprofit, said it can be intimidating for first time line-dancers to see veteran dancers out on the floor.
“It looks terrifying and intimidating, but it’s not,” Chasteen told WTOP. “And we teach a class before every event.”
Before Saturday night’s event, Chasteen taught a two-step country dance class in the basement of the Church of the Pilgrims, a Presbyterian Church on P Street NW, on Friday. He’s run DanceSport Dupont Circle out of the large auditorium since 2011.
Chasteen, who turns 77 in July, grew up on a farm in northern Ohio. At the time, his only formal dance experience was square dancing in barns and country dancing at horse shows, which he attended weekly. His family raised, trained and showed horses professionally, and he worked with the 4-H youth development program on livestock projects.
“So that was somewhat of an introduction to country dance,” Chasteen said.
While taking a break from his undergraduate studies in animal science at Ohio State University in 1969, Chasteen learned Fred Astaire’s ballroom franchise of studios was looking for teachers and offering two free weeks of dance training.
“I didn’t intend to teach. I just wanted the free class,” he said with a chuckle.
At the Fred Astaire studio, he completed the bronze, silver and gold classes, and thought, “I can’t quit now.”
Kicking down the barn
While working nights at a grocery store, Chasteen spent his days teaching ballroom and Latin dance.
He eventually went back to school and graduated through the Army ROTC in 1974. Soon after, Chasteen married his first wife.
After college, he was deployed around the country for the next few years.
But he had a secret — he was gay.
While stationed in Fort Campbell in Kentucky as a captain in the Army Reserves, Chasteen met a fellow farm boy who “just knocked my socks off,” he said.
He described meeting the man as the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“I’m in northern redneck Ohio, and this idea of being gay … and those of us who were gay were just as critical many times as others, because you were indoctrinated with this, ‘Oh, this can’t possibly be me because of the things they say about those people,’” he said.
“After that, then I’m going, ‘Oh, my God, this really is me.’ You can’t say, ‘OK, this is a passing thing, when you want to spend your life with this person,’” he added.
Eventually, he left Ohio and moved to D.C. in the ’80s. The District, at that time, had few spaces dedicated to including LGBTQ+ people. Remingtons, a gay country dance club in Capitol Hill, was the only place Chasteen felt like he could dance with other men where he wouldn’t be judged.
“We all used to dance at Remingtons on Capitol Hill, which was right around Eastern Market, in fact, a block away,” Chasteen said. “And so when Remingtons died, we all decided, ‘Well, if this is going to continue, we have to do it.'”
While still teaching Latin dance, ballroom, waltz, foxtrot and country two-step out of his studio, Chasteen and co-organizer Patrick Di Battista started D.C. Rawhides in 2014. The church basement that he now runs DanceSport out of played host to D.C. Rawhides for three years.
The organization then moved to Town DanceBoutique, which closed in 2018, then to Secrets, which closed during the pandemic in 2020.
“They tore that down and built apartments. We’re in a historic building now, so I don’t think they’re going to tear it down,” Chasteen joked.
Changing minds on the dance floor
Chasteen described the organization as a space where all are welcome, regardless of their dance experience, gender, race or sexual orientation.
Having seen the evolution of the gay pride movement in real time, Chasteen said seeing two men dancing together can, itself, be an act of political radicalism.
“It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s the most effective grassroots method of LGBTQ acceptance of anything I’ve ever seen,” he said. “You change (a close-minded individual’s) whole outlook on this relationship between these two people, and they can see it right there in front of their eyes and go, ‘I guess maybe this isn’t so bad, after all.’”
He said even 25 years ago in the District, seeing two men dancing would mean all eyes were on you.
“When there are two men actually doing it, it really catches everybody’s attention, and every eye is on you,” Chasteen said. “You’re getting all the attention you need. You don’t even have to ask for it.”
That sentiment has seemingly morphed as 14.5% of D.C. now identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community, according to 2024 data from the Williams Institute.
It was apparent how much has changed during a recent Friday evening dance class, where women, young and old, danced hand in hand.
The next project Chasteen said he hopes to organize is a dance program for kids who use wheelchairs.
“You had kids that were just unable to move, but then they really wanted to dance with you,” he said. “That just inspired me.”
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