Twist (dance)

Lore & Background

The dance originated among teenagers in the late 1950s. Dick Clark, noticing the dance's popularity among teenagers, recommended that Cameo Records have the more wholesome Chubby Checker rerecord the song. The twist is performed by standing with feet approximately shoulder width apart, rotating the hips, torso, and legs on the balls of the feet as a single unit while the arms stay more or less stationary. The feet grind back and forth on the floor, with very little vertical motion. Moves include the mashed potato, swimming, drowning, twisting, arm swing, and single leg twist. According to Time magazine, "the dancers barely ever touch each other or move their feet. Everything else, however, moves."

The use of the name "twist" for dancing goes back to the nineteenth century. A pelvic dance motion called the twist came to America from the Congo during slavery. The simple dance now known as the Twist was popularized by Chubby Checker in his preparation to debut the song to a national audience on August 6, 1960, on The Dick Clark Show.

Reader's Guide

The Twist's significance lies in its role as a defining dance craze of the early 1960s, bridging rock and roll music with a new, more physically expressive style of social dancing. It sparked controversy for its provocative pelvic motions, which many parents objected to, yet it became a worldwide phenomenon. The dance inspired a host of imitators—the Jerk, the Pony, the Watusi, the Mashed Potato, the Monkey, and the Funky Chicken—but none achieved its level of popularity. The dance also appeared in films like Twist Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Twist, and was parodied on television shows such as The Alvin Show and The Flintstones.

Did You Know?

• The dance's name dates back to the nineteenth century, and a pelvic motion called the twist came to America from the Congo during slavery.