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# While the Concrete Is Still Wet
- URL: https://insights.theconcretesteppas.com/articles/while-the-concrete-is-still-wet/
- Published: 2026-08-11T14:59:36.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-20T14:27:30.000Z
- Description: A founding letter from Written in Concrete™, documenting urban line dance culture, its people, and its legacy in the DMV, Mid-Atlantic, and beyond.
- Author: Precious "Preciosa" Myers-Brown
- Tags: Written in Concrete™

Let’s imagine it. We walk into the place, and it could be any place. A local bar on a weekday night. A pop-up. A park. The streets of National Harbor. A stage at an alumni weekend. A festival in any of the parks in our neighborhoods, or a community center.

Here’s what happens. You walk in, and everybody is greeting one another, waving close and far off, everyone acknowledging one another. You may see some people wearing their church’s gear and some people not. Some people have bandanas hanging from their back pockets, and some people just have on their clothes from work. They literally left the job and came straight from work, so they didn’t miss an opportunity to gather.

And the DJ starts teasing the group with different songs, and somebody says, you better drop that beat. You better drop that beat. And once that beat drops, no matter if you are 23, 18, 65, or 85, you automatically get into formation. We get into formation. Some may attribute that to Beyoncé. We attribute that to our culture. It is something about a call-and-response. Sometimes it’s words, sometimes it’s a beat from a song, sometimes it’s a drum. And whatever that call is, it’s amazing that we know how to respond.

Whether we know the dances or not, everybody will try to at least put a mean two-step in it. Everybody will try to make sure they’re engaged. And the thing we love to see is how many people help each other out. Some are doing the dance full out. Some are doing it real smooth, real smooth; you can barely see their movement. Some people are just trying to follow along. Some people are looking at their smart devices, trying to figure out if they’re closing their rings. But the one thing you see is an extended diaspora family.

It might be the cookout where everybody busts out that old classic Electric Slide. It might be a good old basement, old-school jump-off, where everybody is just happy to be in the room, even the ones who never get up and dance. And the DJ is like the puppet master. He can make us turn around and give it a mean mug face, or he can make us say, okay, DJ, you’re my DJ.

How we got here. What we had to take to get there. What we were carrying when we walked in the room. What we’ve been bombarded with. What is happening out in the world and in community during that period of time we’re together. None of that matters. None of it matters. We’re just here to come together and get this two-step on.

## We went looking

As founders, we are naturally curious about things. Some of us have been trained professionally in dance since the earliest of times. Some of us have been educators, or are educators, and teach our communities. Some of us have been trained in fitness and in health education, and some of us subscribe to living our best lives, health and wellness being key, and to aging in a way that is meaningful, helping our communities learn the same thing. All of the founders are culturally embedded in the community of dance, in the community of arts and creative expression, and all of us are committed to the diaspora and all of its meaning, its carry, its legacy, its DNA.

So, being students of art, educators, advocates for cultural inclusion, advocates for the diaspora’s legacy and connectivity, of course we went looking for: well, where is it written?

Because we believe each and every one of us has been put here on this earth with a purpose and a trajectory in our hearts. And when we came together, one of the things we loved sharing was history. We love talking about who, what, when, why, where, and how. We bring that knowledge into our classes, whether they’re pop-ups or out in the community in formal settings. Our goal is to connect us. Our goal is to share legacy. Our goal is to share history. Our goal is to not make what we are doing foreign, but to explain how and where we are still connected to our ancestors and to each other, no matter what land or geographic region we landed in. Each of us has come from different areas, or immersed ourselves in different cultures and communities and travels, and what we see is more of us across the diaspora, more connected than we realize. And dance is one of those languages that speaks to everyone, no matter what spoken words we speak.

So when we went looking, here is what we found. We saw the Philadelphia soul line dance community documented and archived at the Library of Congress. We saw Atlanta’s scene celebrated in the national press. We saw Hampton Roads with its own recorded history. We even started to see the development of museums down in Richmond.

The DMV chapter has been lived, but too much of it is unwritten.

You see, the thing about us is that the diaspora is naturally an oral tribe. We talk, and those traditions are carried on in storytelling. What we want to do is document who was here, who is here, and who will be here, so that our future generations will always be able to look back and read the hieroglyphics in the caves. We want to make sure that what we know orally, what we know through experience, what we know in theory and in practice, is written down.

Because what converges here converges nowhere else quite like it. Go-Go, born and defended in DC like a whole resistance movement. Southern soul coming up the highway from the Carolinas and Georgia. House and hip-hop coming down from New York and Baltimore. Latin floors across the diaspora. And line dance is where it all meets. No partner needed, no audition, nobody left on the wall if you don’t want to be.

Then the warning. If nobody writes it down, somebody who was never on that floor will write it. Or nobody will. That’s the part that scares us, because there is so much amazing work and so many amazing contributions, and despite all that has occurred in the past, the diaspora is living and well, and we are still able to meet in the village, if you will.

That is why *Written in Concrete™* exists. We need to make sure that none of this gets lost. For this one, we’re taking on that responsibility. And we’re still out here dancing in these streets.

## Flowers, while they can speak

We want to make sure our elders get their flowers while they can speak in their own words. And if they’re not here anymore, we want to give them their flowers in written documentation. We’re going to name dance creators. We’re going to verify them. When it can’t be verified, we’ll say so plainly. We’ll show how we know what we know.

We’ll name the unnamed labor too. The instructor who stayed late. The DJ who understood the rooms. The venues that gave the community a home. The dancer who remembers where a step first landed. The creator whose name got separated from the dance as the video traveled.

We have lived long enough to know what happens to the people who start things. We see it in hip-hop: the ones who started it didn’t necessarily get their flowers handed to them, even though most of their original songs and beats have been sampled by everybody else. This is also an opportunity to show that what a younger generation is looking at today may be a remake of what was there in the past, or to show how our current generation is carrying forward something that might have gotten lost if it weren’t for the creation of a line dance around a certain song or a certain community. It’s giving love and giving flowers to our contribution to this thing.

And some people will say, why is it so important? It’s just a few repeated steps over and over, over a beat. It’s the chorus. The way we see it, line dancing is not just repeated steps over and over again. It’s the chorus to our backdrop, to our era. Yes, it is repeated steps, but it’s communication. It’s bringing us together. There are stories tied to it. It is a soundtrack to this era of the diaspora’s migration. Some of these steps are borrowed from the tribes. Some are borrowed from different forms of dance. And nothing stops a song from being remixed. That doesn’t make the original song not good. It makes the remix what it is: a remix. Repeating something over and over is not a bad thing. Repetition is the mother of skill.

## Dance is memory

Movement is communication. Dance carries memory, identity, migration, grief, celebration, survival. Sometimes dance is the one thing that’s going to bring you out of that funk. Sometimes dance is the period at the end of a very long sentence. Sometimes dance is the thing that allows us to say: so it happened, and so it is now done. Sometimes dance is the thing that makes you say, forget about it. Sometimes dance is the start of a new era. Sometimes dance is the thing that brings you back to your wellness. Sometimes dance is the thing that brings you back to yourself.

Dance is memory. We carry dance in our DNA. It’s sitting on our cells, at the cellular level, the same cells our great-great-grandparents had, the same cells a multitude of generations have carried. And the fact that we can stand here and still move our bodies with those same cells, carrying memory from someone who was severely oppressed but survived, gives us connection and gives them life. It allows the legacy that lives in each of our bodies to actually dance, to celebrate, in a way their own time never would have allowed. Dance gives us an opportunity to liberate, not just the present us, but the us of the ancestors, the us of the diaspora, the us that may have been forgotten.

And if you want to give it its formal names, this is ancestral inheritance. This is embodied memory. This is cultural transmission. We just call it dance.

So when people tell us, oh, we can’t come, we don’t know the steps: your DNA knows the steps. The memory, the legacy, you carry it at a cellular level, and the way it comes out is the way it comes out. You don’t know which one of these ancestors’ cells sitting in your body wants to dance. That’s the funniest thing. Yes, they may be repeated steps. But it’s an opportunity, over and over and over again, to bring the diaspora out, to bring the ancestors out, and however they want to express that dance, you are just the vessel to let them celebrate.

And you know what else that repeated cadence does? It allows the story to be told over and over and over again. Sometimes the negative stories are the ones that get repeated. What we’re saying is that line dance narrates a different story for our communities. You see negative news; the line dance experience shares a different story. And that repeated cadence, the repetition, the repeated steps, the repeated opportunities to show our joy, our togetherness, our community, our helping each other, all of that becomes the narrative we tell. It’s more important than just five, six, seven, eight.

We call our wellness program Sudoku for the Body™, because we don’t want to lose skill. We want to still be able to hear the call and respond. We want our bodies to hear the call and respond. What we do works for everybody. Anyone can participate.

## The six rooms

We met together as founders and came up with six forms for this publication, like different rooms, if you will. There may be more later, but for now:

**The Record.** The big essays. The larger movement story.

**First Position.** Sitting with elders, creators, instructors, DJs, culture carriers, those in the spirit of creation and development. It’s also a play on words, because in dance and ballet there are different positions, and first position is the first position. We’re just trying to be cool.

**Where the Floor Was.** Remembering the venues and the nights that held the community. Not every venue supports our community, let’s just say that. So we want to honor the venues that have partnered with our dance community, respected it, given it space. This is legacy, and we want to write it down. Everybody remembers the stories of performers in the 40s and 50s, from Black and Brown communities, who could perform but could not enter through the front door. We always remember those spaces. The history is what it is. What we are saying is that we will document the venues and the nights where the community gathered, and where that floor was.

**The Breather.** What movement asks of the brain, the body, the confidence, and the connection. A lot of times we think we’re just out dancing, and sometimes we are just out dancing and lollygagging. But there is something to be said about how this has developed as a form of fitness, and how communities can use this as a way of healing ourselves and each other.

**Field Notes.** One dance at a time. Its creator, its music, its travels. Notes from the field. This is the education piece, where we can get nerdy with it but also have a little fun.

**From the Concrete.** What we’re learning building a business inside a living culture.

Together, these rooms are a method of remembering. A method of preserving, in the concrete.

## We’re building a skyline

For us, concrete represents a solid foundation: a mixture of different materials that holds stories.

We are very spiritual, and sometimes we have some very deep spiritual conversations. We love to go out to diaspora-supported and diaspora-representative venues and restaurants, to patronize them, to sit and have our meetings, and what turns out to be some very deep spiritual conversations. One of those conversations was about how God saw fit that we should come together. We represent the different materials that mix to form concrete, and that became our name.

And concrete, mixed with wires and metals and the other materials in the community, lets you build stories. When we say building stories, think about a building: the floors of a building are called stories. From a base of concrete you can build a skyscraper, with concrete laid across each floor, each story, building up.

We were like, wow. Look at the divine. Look at God. Look at what He’s been able to do: pull all of us together to form concrete so that we can create stories. Skyscraper stories. And what makes one skyscraper great is not the skyscraper by itself. It’s the skyline. And everybody loves a skyline.

So we’re not just creating content. We’re building a skyline.

And in addition to concrete being a durable foundation, our culture is as well. We are a durable foundation. Things pressed into wet concrete remain. When we were kids, somebody would pour fresh concrete and everybody wanted to etch their names in the wall or the ground, and those names stayed there like forever. As founders of Concrete Steppas™, we have a boot print in our logo. It’s a period. An exclamation. A mark that we’ve been here. A fossil, proof that we existed, a declaration that somebody was here.

We’re not just writing our own story. We see something bigger. We’re making sure the story of our community cannot be flattened, forgotten, miscredited, or told without the people who carried it. We are taking our experiences, our love of community, culture, art, and people, our love of engagement, our love of legacy, and writing it in concrete.

## Help us write it down

This is an invitation and a call-out for anyone. We want to talk to everybody and hear the stories, and make sure they are preserved and documented with passion and care. What do you want to tell us? We want to hear the first line dance you learned and who taught it to you. The room you never forgot. Whose work deserves flowers. What’s already documented. Where we’re wrong. What we could not have known because we weren’t present.

Here’s how to reach us: reply to this letter, or come through our website at [theconcretesteppas.com](https://theconcretesteppas.com/?ref=insights.theconcretesteppas.com).

To those who have supported us along the way: it hasn’t been a long way yet, but we believe we have been divinely aligned to form a foundation and build these skyscraping stories, to bring a level of awareness and respect to a chapter that might not otherwise have been documented. This is our attempt.

So what’s going on, Concrete Steppa Nation™? We love all people who support and love this community. And here is our charge to the Nation: while the concrete is still wet, we must write it down.

## From the Founding Circle

**Founder Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown (Steel Sugar) says:** Man, as soon as somebody said you get to dance, hang out, build community, visit Black and Brown establishments, make up dances, write, take media, record videos, and support health and wellness and uplifting women to live their best life, oh, they had me at “heeeyyy.” I love being a part of this company with my sistas, and we affectionately call ourselves Concrete Steppas™. I love us, but I am absolutely overjoyed with Concrete Steppa Nation™, because while we may take a few steps, the Nation can migrate a movement. And we couldn’t do it without them.

**Founder KV Simmons (Oh That’s KV) says:** Being a founder in this movement and at Concrete Steppas™ means the opportunity to create history, but not just history: the opportunity to create history with like-minded women who are also committed to community and to celebrating women. I am thankful to have this opportunity, and I’m looking forward to establishing a legacy that goes on and on and on.

**Founder Dr. Danielle “Tonie” Tyler (Hat Trick Hustle) says:** When I think about being part of an organization that is moving to codify the historic role that cultural movements and joy have played in the resistance and transformation of people of African descent in the Americas, I am overjoyed and humbled to do this servant leadership. Charting the footpaths our ancestors took across the Atlantic Ocean into cities like Charleston, Annapolis, or New York, and seeing the role of movement, is integral to providing a space and direction for our future generations, as well as honoring our ancestors.

**Founder M’Balia “Bella” Rucker (Saucey) says:** The opportunity to pull together all of our different talents and backgrounds to build and uplift our communities, especially at this point, has so much meaning. What I love about being a founder with this group of sisters is that we lean in, we listen, and there’s an innate ability to revamp and restructure when we have to. That means we’re able to move faster with more intention, and our passion never dwindles. I believe that’s evident when you see us together, and we hope to build that with the Nation.

*Written in Concrete™ is the written record of line dance culture through an urban lens, rooted in the DMV and tracing how the dance travels through the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. Published by Concrete Steppas™.*

Concrete Steppas™ is a movement and experience collective, powered by line dance, founded by Precious “Preciosa” Myers-Brown (Steel Sugar), KV Simmons (Oh That’s KV), Dr. Danielle “Tonie” Tyler (Hat Trick Hustle), and M’Balia “Bella” Rucker (Saucey). A Black women-owned business headquartered at National Harbor, Maryland.

*Originally published in* [*Written in Concrete™ on Substack*](https://writteninconcrete.substack.com/p/while-the-concrete-is-still-wet)*.*