OCEAN PINES — The country music coming from the Community Center gym on any given Monday and Wednesday morning doesn’t sound, upon first listen, like workout music. It lacks the driving beat that tends to mark official exercise. 

And, strictly speaking, exercise is a secondary aim for the Ocean Liners, the line-dancing club that occupies the gym at those times.

A significant number of members, however, are holdovers from the Shape-Ups exercise group that meets an hour earlier, so Mondays and Wednesdays are a heavy workout day for many of the participants, weather they are doing traditional exercise or getting their heart rates up to the strains of “Boot Scoot Boogie”.

Lynn Gibbons is one of the group leaders. Her responsibilities tend to include making sure the group’s music is ready and the CD player is working properly, and that there is, for lack of a better term, a song list of appropriate length and variety to keep the day’s dancing both fun and moving along.

Betty Daugherty, in one of the members who helps teach the dances to the rest of the group. Although line dancing has a base, like other forms of dance, putting together a group of predetermined moves and adding some new ones gives participants as well as their audiences a variety of dances as extensive as the song list being performed.

In addition to doing it for fun and exercise, the Ocean Liners also take their show on the road performing a functions. For example, next week they will put on a show at the annual Christmas event held by the Shape Ups club. This time of year they also perform at many of the area nursing homes.