Dance Fads

[mkylis]

In pretty much every decade of the twentieth century -- through rock and roll -- there has been a dance of the decade. Who can forget Al Gore doing to macarena?

But we seem to be at what is at least a temporary end of this, and I am
wondering why. Is the usual suspect: cultural fragmentation? No single musical style dominates to the extent that it can create a phenomenon? Is it that hip-hop hasn't spawned a dance craze? Is it that dancing has been replaced totally by drinking?

Has anyone written about this?

Any thoughts?

[Sagitta]

Welcome to df mkylis! :)

I have a vague recollection about some sort of discussion about this a while back. It is somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind. :?

Okay -- I know that 80s was the disco decade -- Saturday night fever and all that, but somehow I'm pretty ignorant about the other decades. Perhaps you can help me out by filling me in.

[mkylis]

thanks for the welcome sagitta. lets see, rock and roll became synonymous with dance crazes - blink-and-you-missed-it fads that involved some wild new dance steps, usually accompanied by a hit single either before or after the fact. In the Fifties, rock dances were generally appropriated from other sources; the lindy hop and the jitterbug served as a basis for many of the fast dances, and aside from the occasional glorious one-off (The Diamonds' deathless, monumentally sleazy "The Stroll"), most rock dancing in the Ike Years remained confined to a few moves.

That all changed in the early Sixties, as a nation desparate for fads and able to buy armloads of 45s discovered the thrill of making an idiot out of yourself, all by yourself, on the dance floor. If you were around then, you know the names by heart: The Twist. The Hully Gully. The Watusi. The Jerk. The Fly. There were dozens of others.

The arrival of the Beatles on American shores in 1964 didn't exactly kill off dance crazes - The Brit Invasion even tried one of its own with the super-lame "Do The Freddie" - but the beatnik culture that mutated into hippiedom soon after DID kill the fad. Although disco would later bring line dancing to the masses, individual craziness never infected rock quite the same way again; new dance fads remain confined to R&B and hip-hop these days, and rock fans have seemingly decided to rage rather than cut a rug. Their loss.

Then you have what passes as dancing for the rock crowd the past 20 years, the pogo, slam dancing, body surfing. I guess that raves are considered a form of dance but they all lack structure.

[squirrel]

welcome, mkylis! glad to have you among us...!

dancing fads... haven't really thought about it before... but I think just that the mentality of people changed in time... drinking is far easier than dancing and it doesn't require special skills... just lots of training :wink:

most of the people I know are just happy with going to a club and grinding :) with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other... I used to be like that, before I discovered Salsa... and mind me, I am an energetic person... before Salsa, it was aerobics and fitness and long walks in the park and at the mountains... (the last 2 are still valid)

[etchuck]

Well, I think currently it's the "cha cha slide". Annoying little line dance it is. It doesn't resemble a cha-cha (unless you find the strict tempo cover of it, which I have heard exists), and it's not quite like the electric slide either.