40 Dance Fads That Left Older Generations Shaking Their Heads

Whether it’s moshing or the mambo, when new dance crazes appear on the scene they have a habit of shocking the prim. Perhaps the sight of young folks enjoying themselves with joyful abandon is just too much to bear. Anyways, we’ve dug up 40 dance fads dating from the early 20th century right up to the 2000s. Read on to be either amused or appalled, depending on your inclinations.

40. Foxtrot

It’s a strange name the foxtrot, as it involves neither foxes nor trotting. Born back in 1914, it was apparently named for one Harry Fox, a true American all-rounder. He was a vaudeville performer and circus act who also found time to play pro baseball. As for the dance, timing is all, since it’s a case of slow-slow then quick-quick

39. Tango

The sinuous moves of a well-executed tango still delight and amaze. While the dance became immensely popular in early 20th century America, the tango’s origins are much older. In fact, they’re said to date all the way back to medieval Europe. Silver-screen star Rudolph Valentino set the tango trend alight in a 1921 movie, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

38. Charleston

Why’s this energetic dance called the Charleston? Simple! It came right out of Charleston, South Carolina. The strait-laced of the 1920s were shocked to the core by its frenetic moves. It was popularized in a 1923 stage musical named Running Wild, and became the archetypal dance of the inter-war generation known as the “flappers.”

37. Lindy Hop

The Lindy Hop’s 1920s birthplace was the famed Savoy Ballroom in New York City’s prime African-American neighborhood, Harlem. It was a fusion affair, bringing together the traditional moves of European dance and rhythms from Africa. Kicking off at the Savoy in 1928, this dance sensation lasted right up to the 1940s.

36. Swing

Swing was the de rigueur dance that accompanied the big band jazz music of the 1930s and 1940s. Think of names like Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie. The dance is said to have been influenced by the high-energy moves of the Lindy Hop. But it added an extra dimension with flamboyant gymnastics including back-flips and extravagant lifts.

35. Conga

Most of us have been at a party and joined a conga line, a dance that’s actually an uproarious communal celebration. It’s said to have originated in Cuba among people of African heritage and took off as a craze in Paris during the 1930s. From France, the dance came back across the Atlantic and was soon established in the U.S.

34. The mambo

Although a “Mambo” is a female practitioner of traditional Haitian Voodoo, the dance of that name actually comes originally from Cuba. It mixes traditional Cuban dance with American swing. Said to have been first performed at a Havana nightclub in 1943, this mesmeric dance soon took root across the Caribbean Sea in America.

33. Cuban rumba

Cuba gave us the sensuous moves of the mambo, and it also produced the lively steps of the rumba, a dance with roots in the 19th century. In Cuba, a good rumba’s underpinned by the beat of African drumming combined with Spanish airs. A somewhat sanitized version took America’s dancehalls by storm in the mid-20th century.

32. Cha-cha

We have the splendidly named Monsieur Pierre Jean Phillipe Zurcher-Margolle to thank for the syncopated steps of the cha-cha. He was actually an English dance tutor, and when he visited Cuba he noticed a particular variant of the rumba that incorporated additional beats. Back in England he refined this — and the cha-cha was born.

31. Square dance

Square dancing is said to come from the traditional steps of 17th-century English folk dances. One man more than any other was responsible for spreading it across the U.S.: automobile mogul Henry Ford. He considered dances such as the Charleston and the jitterbug to be shockingly profane. So he poured money into promoting square dancing, which he thought much more seemly.

30. The swim

Despite its name, the swim could be accomplished without water. In fact, it was a weird dry-land parody of swimming actions, and it invaded dance clubs during the 1960s. You could take your pick: breast stroke, crawl, doggy paddle, and even back stroke were all permissible moves. You could even hold your nose and crouch down to mime going underwater.

29. The twist

It’s impossible to think about the twist without the estimable Chubby Checker coming to mind. He it was, of course, who had a massive hit with his evergreen 1961 track “Let’s Twist Again.” And the beauty of this dance was that just about anyone could master the gyrating movements in a few moments.

28. Limbo

If you’re really going to take the limbo seriously, you’ll want to be in pretty good condition. Anyone who’s tried it knows that bending over backwards to get low to the floor and under a bar is no mean feat. A traditional Trinidadian dance, it shot to fame in 1962 with the release of “Limbo Rock” by Chubby Checker.

27. Loco-motion

The loco-motion was another dance that crossed America like wildfire on the back of a hit single. In this case the record was Little Eva’s “Loco-motion,” a song that’s been rehashed many times by everybody from Kylie Minogue to Dwight Yoakum and, appropriately enough, Grand Funk Railroad. The dance involves a line of folks moving together — a bit like a railroad train.

26. Mashed potato

Master of funk James Brown was the man who brought the mashed potato to the world. He’d been performing the song and the dance as early as 1958, but it wasn’t until 1962 that the craze swept America. As well as Brown, several artists recorded songs around the theme of the dance, including acts you might not remember — Nat Kendrick & the Swans, anyone?

25. The Batusi

The Batusi was preceded by a dance called the Watusi, which dates from 1963. But losing the “w” and replacing it with a “b” was apparently the punning idea of the producers of the Batman TV show that premiered in 1966. The famous scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction when John Travolta dances with Uma Thurman uses elements from the Batusi.

24. Jitterbug

The jitterbug came out of both Lindy Hop and swing, borrowing moves from each of those dance crazes. It shot to fame in a 1935 movie titled Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party. The origins of the name are murky, but the dance itself evolved in the African-American juke joints of the Prohibition era.

23. Hokey pokey

The Hokey Pokey — or Hokey Cokey in the U.K. — is a dance that’s as popular with kids as adults. The moves are so easy to learn that you scarcely even need to be able to dance to swing along with this one. It’s said that it evolved from traditional British folk dancing. In the mid-20th century it became a British music hall favorite, and the tune was an American hit for the Ray Anthony Orchestra in 1953.

22. Hand jive

This is one of the few dances that you can actually perform while standing still on the dance floor — or even from the comfort of your chair. That’s because it’s all in the hands. American TV viewers first saw the hand jive during 1954 in The Johnny Otis Show. It’s been claimed that a stationary dance became essential because dance floors were just too crowded.

21. The hustle

We’re moving into the 1970s now, and the dance in question here is the famous hustle. It came out of the thriving dance clubs of New York City and shot to fame thanks to the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever. Disco dancing Tony Manero, played by John Travolta, memorably hustled his way across the big screen.

20. Salsa

Salsa is a real hybrid phenomenon that began in the 1960s, taking elements from various Latin American dances including rumba and mambo. American steps from earlier eras of dance including swing are also in the mix. It reached a peak of popularity during the 1970s, when it was a staple of New York disco.

19. The robot

Apparently, the robot got its start in the field of mime prior to invading America’s dance-floors during the 1970s. This novelty dance, it won’t surprise you, involved moving like a robot. Perhaps its most famous moment came in 1974. That was the year the Jackson 5 used it to accompany their massive hit “Dancing Machine.”

18. Popping

We go back to the early years of the 1970s to trace the story of popping. People first started to do this dance in Fresno, California, in an early incarnation of a style that’d later lead to hip-hop. But in its original form it was more a type of funk dancing characterized by sharply defined muscular movements.

17. The electric slide

A musician called Neville Livingston — more famous as Bunny Wailer of Bob Marley’s band — put out a single titled “Electric Boogie” during 1976. A kind of line dance, the electric slide’s moves were created to go with the song by choreographer Richard “Ric” Silver. The dance caught on in a big way and become a top craze of the 1970s.

16. Moshing

Moshing’s a natural partner to both heavy metal and punk music. It was a physically challenging dance that involved getting into a tight scrum right under the stage as bands tore through crashing guitar numbers. Watching old footage of people moshing, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were witnessing a no-holds-barred barroom fight.

15. The worm

Actually a dance move favored by the most energetic break-dancers, the worm will see you flat out on the floor. That’s because to perform it, you have to get down on your belly and make like a squirming worm. Amusing to watch, certainly, but maybe not always a whole lot of fun to perform. And if you do want to do it convincingly, you’ll need to be in good shape.

14. Funky Chicken

The Funky Chicken owes its existence to a track called “Do the Funky Chicken,” a 1969 single from Rufus Thomas. What, you may well ask, is so funky about a chicken? To be honest, your guess is as good as ours. But Thomas was apparently confident about the funkiness of chickens, even starting his song with the crowing of the farmyard animal.

13. The chicken

Not to be confused with the Funky Chicken, the chicken is a dance and a song with its origins in the 1950s. For years a version featuring ducks was a staple of children’s birthday parties. But according to legend it broke out into the wider world during 1981. That was when folks at a German-themed fair in Tulsa, Oklahoma, launched into the duck version of the song. No duck suit was available, but a chicken one was. And so the chicken was born.

12. Cabbage Patch

Remember Cabbage Patch dolls, a craze of the 1980s? Well, this is the Cabbage Patch dance. Its arrival on the dance-floor’s credited to a group called the Gucci Crew II. They released a dance track called “The Cabbage Patch” in 1987, a kind of cross between a novelty song and a techno/hip-hop hybrid.

11. Y.M.C.A

It might seem strange to have a dance whose letters stand for “Young Men’s Christian Association,” but that’s what we have here. The dance was invented by the Village People and immortalized in their 1978 hit called, of course, “Y.M.C.A.” The movements, depicting the letters of the title, are now perhaps one of the best-known novelty dances of all time.

10. Breakdancing

Like its accompanying hip-hop music, breakdancing was born during the 1970s in the Bronx district of New York City. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that both the music and the dance broke through into the mainstream. With its highly athletic moves, breakdancing is another one of those dances that requires a high level of physical fitness to be performed convincingly.

9. The Thriller

Despite it now being some three decades since its release, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” remains a groundbreaking example of music video. And dancers around the world imitated the extraordinary zombie choreography that accompanied Jackson’s song in the 1983 video. According to Guinness World Records, the 66 million sales of the album the single came from make it the best-selling ever.

8. Walk Like an Egyptian

How much do we really know about how Egyptians walked? A moot question, we’d say. Anyway, The Bangles apparently had a pretty clear idea of how those ancient people moved around when the band released the song “Walk Like an Egyptian” in 1986. The accompanying video showed the band throwing the moves that were imitated by hordes of non-Egyptian dance fans.

7. The Moonwalk

Michael Jackson made the Moonwalk world-famous when he performed it on TV back in 1983. But the origins of the slick dance movement go back much further — to 1955. That was the year a tap-dancer by the name of Bill Bailey performed what we now call the Moonwalk live on stage at the Apollo Theater in New York’s Harlem district.

6. Voguing

Voguing, according to a 2017 article in British magazine The Spectator, can trace its roots back to illicit drag balls held in Harlem. Cross-dressing is all part of the fun, and the dancing itself is expressive and flamboyant. Madonna made Voguing popular in 1990 with the release of her hit single “Vogue,” accompanied by a video highlighting the moves.

5. Stepping

Some three decades ago The Cosby Show had a spinoff called A Different World, and it was this that brought stepping to the great American public. The dance went even more mainstream when it was featured in the 1996 Olympics opening ceremony in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s generally a group dance that borrows elements from tap, breakdancing, and gymnastics.

4. Flash mobs

A flash mob might involve a variety of different dance genres. But what makes it unique is the way it’s organized. Social media’s at the heart of it, with people using virtual channels to call for crowds to appear — seemingly spontaneously — at agreed times and locations. Once a crowd’s assembled, the dancing kicks off, often to the bemusement of onlookers.

3. Gangnam Style

South Korean singer PSY was the man who brought us Gangnam Style with a 2012 track and video of that name. The film was an eccentric blend of dances, each featuring PSY with an aesthetic all of his own. It was a massive international hit, and the first clip on YouTube ever to attract one billion views.

2. The Harlem Shake

The Harlem Shake dates back to the beginning of the 1980s, when the performer Al B. danced it on Harlem basketball courts. But it went viral with a version released by Baauer in 2012 that had an accompanying video illustrating the dance moves. The clip took off as a much-watched meme on YouTube.

1. Macarena

Back in the mid-1990s, it seemed like the song “The Macarena” was everywhere, to the point that it was almost impossible to escape the ear-worm of a tune. And the dance it went with also seemed to crop up all over the place. The responsibility for this track lay with a band called Los Del Rio, a Spanish duo.