177 Fun Facts About Dance

Which partner dance was born in the 1880s in port areas along the Río de la Plata?

The tango grew up in the 1880s in the port districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo; Argentina and Uruguay jointly had it inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.

Ballet originated during the Renaissance of the fifteenth century in which country?

Ballet began in Italy, in the lavish court spectacles of 15th-century Renaissance princes; it was later refined in France and Russia, which is why its step vocabulary is French.

The waltz is danced in which time signature?

The waltz is in 3/4 time, one strong beat followed by two lighter ones per bar. The name comes from the German walzen, to roll or turn, and the close hold scandalised polite society around 1800.

Michael Jackson unveiled the moonwalk on a 1983 TV special marking the 25th anniversary of which record label?

Motown staged the anniversary special, though Jackson had long since left the label for Epic; he unveiled the moonwalk there while performing his new solo hit Billie Jean.

Breaking (breakdancing) made its debut as an Olympic sport at which Games?

Paris 2024 gave breaking its Olympic debut, yet the sport had already been left off the Los Angeles 2028 programme in October 2023, months before its first Olympic battle.

Breaking developed among African American and Puerto Rican youth in which New York City borough?

Breaking emerged in the Bronx in the early 1970s alongside hip-hop, whose DJs such as Kool Herc looped the rhythmic drum breaks of funk and soul records for the dancers.

Which composer wrote the ballet Swan Lake in 1875-76?

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake in 1875-76, the first of his three ballets. He never saw the version most companies now dance: it was revived in St Petersburg in 1895, after his death.

The score of The Nutcracker is noted for its use of which bell-like keyboard instrument?

Celesta chimes give the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy its voice; the composer came across the newly invented instrument in Paris and at once asked his publisher to buy one for the ballet.

The Nutcracker ballet is set on which night of the year?

Christmas Eve is when the ballet opens, at a party where Clara is given the nutcracker doll that springs to life at midnight; the plot comes from an 1816 fairy tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann.

In The Nutcracker, the toy soldiers battle an army led by whom?

The Mouse King is beaten when Clara throws her slipper at him, distracting him long enough for the nutcracker to win the fight; the nutcracker, by then a prince, leads her on to a land of sweets.

Flamenco developed within the gitano (Romani) subculture of which region of Spain?

Andalusia's gitanos kept flamenco largely to family gatherings until the cafés cantantes of 19th-century Seville put singers and dancers on stage for paying audiences.

Riverdance began life in 1994 as a seven-minute interval act at which televised event?

The Eurovision Song Contest interval, broadcast from Dublin on 30 April 1994, lasted only seven minutes; within a year its producers had built the piece into a full-length stage show.

Which Irish dancing champion starred with Jean Butler when Riverdance opened as a full stage show in Dublin in 1995?

Michael Flatley, the first American to win a world Irish dancing title, led the show with Jean Butler, but he and Riverdance parted ways in October 1995, on the eve of its second London run.

Which Spanish duo recorded 'Macarena', which topped the US chart for 14 weeks in 1996?

Los del Río's Antonio Romero improvised the chorus on a 1992 trip to Venezuela, in praise of a local flamenco dancer; the Bayside Boys remix then held the US No. 1 for 14 weeks in 1996.

The Charleston, the defining dance of the 1920s, is named after a harbour city in which US state?

South Carolina's port of Charleston gave the dance its name: it began as a Black folk dance of the American South and became a national craze after the 1923 Broadway musical Runnin' Wild.

Whose 1960 cover of Hank Ballard's 'The Twist' set off a dance craze?

Chubby Checker's cover topped the US chart in 1960 and again in 1962; Hank Ballard's original, released as a B-side, had climbed no higher than No. 28 on the Hot 100.

Modern hula's ukulele grew from a small guitar brought to Hawaii from where?

Portugal: immigrants who landed from the ship Ravenscrag in 1879 played the little guitar for the islanders, who soon adopted it as their own; the older hula kahiko keeps to chant and traditional percussion.

Capoeira, blending fighting with dance, acrobatics and music, comes from which country?

Capoeira was developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans and their descendants; it was banned under the 1890 penal code, and Mestre Bimba opened the first officially permitted academy in Salvador in the 1930s.

The Lindy Hop was born in 1928 in the African-American communities of which New York City neighbourhood?

Harlem troupes such as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers carried the dance out of the neighbourhood's ballrooms and into Hollywood films such as A Day at the Races and Hellzapoppin'.

In which 1994 film do a hitman and his boss's wife enter a twist contest at a 1950s-themed diner?

Pulp Fiction puts Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace on the dance floor to a Chuck Berry song; the part revived John Travolta's career and earned him his first Oscar nomination since Saturday Night Fever.

Which Latin dance music is tied to New York's Fania Records, whose All-Stars filled Yankee Stadium in 1973?

Salsa, Spanish for 'sauce', was the name under which Fania sold New York's Cuban-rooted dance music; label co-founder Johnny Pacheco led the All-Stars, whose 1973 stadium show drew more than 40,000 fans.

Which BBC ballroom contest is sold around the world as Dancing with the Stars?

Strictly Come Dancing blends two older titles, the BBC's long-running ballroom series Come Dancing and the 1992 film Strictly Ballroom; overseas versions run as Dancing with the Stars.

Who hosted Dancing with the Stars for its first 28 seasons, starting in 2005?

Tom Bergeron hosted from the 2005 premiere through season 28 in 2019, most of those years while also fronting America's Funniest Home Videos; ABC replaced him with Tyra Banks in 2020.

Which 1990 documentary about New York's drag ball scene brought voguing to the mainstream?

Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary on the city's ball culture, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991; voguing takes its name from the model poses in Vogue magazine.

Bharatanatyam, a classical dance long performed in Hindu temples under the name Sadir, comes from which Indian state?

Tamil Nadu's temple dancers were for centuries its only performers; it reached the public stage only around 1930, when revivalists renamed the old Sadir as Bharatanatyam.

The name of the north Indian classical dance Kathak comes from a Sanskrit word meaning what?

Kathak comes from katha, Sanskrit for story; the kathakaars were travelling storytellers who danced tales from the Hindu epics, and the form later absorbed Persian influences under Mughal court patronage.

Which actor played dance instructor Johnny Castle opposite Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing (1987)?

Patrick Swayze, who had trained in classical ballet, also co-wrote and sang She's Like the Wind for the film's soundtrack; the single reached No. 3 on the US chart.

Dirty Dancing is set at Kellerman's, a family resort in which mountains?

The Catskills were the setting only on paper: the film was shot far from New York, in Virginia and North Carolina, with a Virginia mountain lodge standing in for Kellerman's.

Tony Manero, John Travolta's disco-dancing character in Saturday Night Fever, lives in which part of the New York area?

Brooklyn's Bay Ridge is Tony Manero's home turf; the story came from a 1976 New York magazine article that its writer, Nik Cohn, admitted twenty years later he had made up.

Which Kirov Ballet star broke away from Soviet minders at a Paris airport in 1961 and defected?

Rudolf Nureyev was told at Le Bourget on 16 June 1961 to fly home to Moscow instead of on to London with the company; suspecting a trap, he slipped his KGB minders and asked for asylum.

Fred Astaire made ten Hollywood musicals, including Top Hat and Swing Time, with which dance partner?

Ginger Rogers made nine RKO musicals with Astaire from 1933 and a reunion in 1949; in the first, Flying Down to Rio, they were billed only fourth and fifth, yet stole the show.

In 2015 Misty Copeland became the first Black woman promoted to principal dancer at which company?

American Ballet Theatre promoted Misty Copeland to principal on 30 June 2015, the first Black woman to hold that rank in the company's history; she had not started ballet until age 13.

Merengue is the national dance of which country?

Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, in power from 1930 to 1961, promoted merengue as the national music and dance; UNESCO added it to its heritage list in 2016.

The polka originated in the nineteenth century in which region?

Bohemia's polka had reached the ballrooms of Prague by the mid-1830s; within a decade it was the rage of Paris, a craze dubbed 'polkamania', and it soon crossed to London and the Americas.

How many dancers make up a set in a square dance?

8 dancers, four couples standing on the sides of a square, make up a set; a caller cues each figure over the music, so nobody has to memorise the routine.

The name cha-cha-chá is an onomatopoeia said to imitate what?

The shuffle of dancers' feet on the quick triple step is said to have given the name; violinist Enrique Jorrín devised the rhythm in Havana because dancers struggled with the syncopated styles then in fashion.

The dancing plague of 1518 broke out in which city?

Strasbourg, then a free city of the Holy Roman Empire, saw it begin in July 1518 when a woman known as Frau Troffea started dancing in the street; one modern explanation is stress-induced mass hysteria.

Which disco group's 1978 hit has crowds spelling out its four-letter title with their arms?

Village People did not invent the arm letters: the studio audience on American Bandstand did, in January 1979, and host Dick Clark urged singer Victor Willis to work the moves into the act.

In flamenco, what is the rhythmic hand-clapping that accompanies the dancer called?

Palmas are more than applause: the clappers hold the rhythmic cycle for the dancer, and when no guitarist is on hand their hands alone carry the beat.

Haka are ceremonial dances of which people?

The Māori perform haka for far more than war: these posture dances welcome distinguished guests, mark great achievements and honour the dead at funerals.

Which rugby nation's team performs the haka 'Ka Mate' before its matches?

New Zealand's All Blacks perform Ka Mate, said to have been composed around 1820 by the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha after he escaped his enemies by hiding in a food-storage pit.

National Tap Dance Day in the US falls on May 25, the birthday of which tap legend?

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, born on 25 May 1878, was famed for his stair dance, tapping up and down a flight of steps, which he performed on film with Shirley Temple; Congress named the day in 1989.

Which impresario founded the Ballets Russes, the company that opened in Paris in 1909?

Sergei Diaghilev founded the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 and ran it until his death in 1929. It never performed in Russia, and it commissioned Stravinsky, Picasso, Matisse and even Coco Chanel.

Which 1913 ballet, choreographed by Nijinsky, nearly caused a riot at its Paris premiere?

The Rite of Spring, to Stravinsky's score, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913 amid jeers and fistfights; it eclipsed Nijinsky's Jeux, which had opened to indifference two weeks earlier.

Which modern-dance pioneer became, in 1976, the first dancer to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Martha Graham received the medal from Gerald Ford, who called her a national treasure; forty years earlier she had refused an invitation to dance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, citing the persecution of fellow artists.

The tarantella, a whirling Mediterranean folk dance, was once believed to cure the bite of which creature?

A spider: the bite of a wolf spider found around Taranto was blamed for a frenzy called tarantism, and dancing was the supposed remedy; dance and spider probably both take their names from the town.

What Gaelic name is given to a social evening of folk dancing?

A ceilidh at first meant simply a social visit, with songs and tales as likely as dancing; competitive Irish stepdancers meet at a feis instead.

Samba originated among Afro-descendant communities in which Brazilian state?

Bahia's Recôncavo region is the home of samba de roda, a circle dance with a soloist ringed by singers and clapping hands; migrants carried it south, where it grew into the urban samba of Carnival.

The whirling dervishes belong to the Mevlevi order, inspired by the teachings of which 13th-century poet?

Rumi died in Konya in 1273, and the order took shape there around his teaching; its dancers spin with the right hand raised to the sky and the left turned to the earth.

A ballet dancer performing 'en pointe' supports their whole body weight on what?

The tips of the feet carry everything en pointe, the toes braced inside a stiffened pointe-shoe box; the technique grew from a wish to make ballerinas look weightless, and it takes years of training.

Fred Astaire's only competitive Academy Award nomination came for which 1974 disaster film?

The Towering Inferno brought Astaire a Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing an ageing con man, not for dancing; he won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for it, a quarter-century after his honorary Oscar of 1950.

Which French king, a keen dancer himself, founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661?

Louis XIV founded the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661; a serious dancer himself, he had appeared as Apollo in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit in 1653, which helped earn him the nickname the Sun King.

What is the name of the short, stiff ballet skirt that projects horizontally from the hips?

The Classical tutu stands straight out from the hips because hems rose steadily from the late 19th century to show off the dancer's legs; the soft, calf-length Romantic tutu was made famous by Marie Taglioni in the 1830s.

Which Russian ballerina made The Dying Swan, created for her by Michel Fokine, her signature solo?

Anna Pavlova kept swans on the lake at Ivy House, her London home, and posed beside them for photographs that recalled the solo.

Mikhail Baryshnikov made his career in America, but in which country did he defect from a Soviet tour in 1974?

Canada: after a show in Toronto on 29 June 1974 he gave his KGB escort the slip and asked for political asylum, helped by a local ballet critic who had passed him his contacts' phone numbers.

For directing which film did Bob Fosse win his 1973 Academy Award?

Fosse won Best Director for Cabaret at the March 1973 ceremony, beating Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather; the same year he took Tonys for Pippin and Emmys for Liza with a Z.

Isadora Duncan, the pioneer of modern dance, died in 1927 when what became tangled in the wheel of a car?

Her scarf wound into the wheel and axle of the open car she was riding in at Nice; flowing fabric had been her signature since she first danced barefoot in a Greek tunic, in revolt against ballet's rigidity.

The waltz shocked polite society when it became fashionable in the 1780s in which city?

Vienna made the waltz fashionable in the 1780s, yet as late as 1825 an English handbook was still calling it 'a riotous and indecent German dance'.

Which International Latin ballroom dance is modelled on a Spanish bullfight?

Paso doble casts the leader as the matador and the follower usually as his swirling cape; its music is the brisk march played as bullfighters enter the ring.

Which 1969 Sydney Pollack film set at a Depression-era dance marathon starred Jane Fonda?

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? follows Jane Fonda's Gloria through a gruelling 1930s marathon whose $1,500 prize, she learns, will be swallowed by deductions for expenses; Gig Young won an Oscar as its emcee.

Which young women were known for dancing the Charleston?

Flappers took to the Charleston and other fast new dances that were thought shocking at the time; James P. Johnson's tune of that name, from a 1923 Broadway show, had set off the craze.

Which Indian film's high-energy dance number 'Naatu Naatu' won the 2023 Oscar for Best Original Song?

RRR shot the number outside the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president's official residence, a few months before Russia's invasion; it was the first song from an Indian film to win the award.

Queen Kaʻahumanu banned public hula in 1830 under pressure from which newcomers to Hawaii?

New England missionaries had arrived in 1820 and baptised the queen in 1825; half a century after her ban, King Kalākaua brought hula back into public life.

How many basic positions of the feet are there in classical ballet?

Five positions of the feet, each turned out from the hip, underpin classical ballet; in his 1725 treatise the dancing master Pierre Rameau credited the French choreographer Pierre Beauchamp with setting them down.

In ballet, what is a 'pas de deux'?

A dance duet, literally 'step of two' in French; in its slow adagio the man steadies the ballerina so she can hold balances that would be impossible on her own.

Which Romantic ballet, first performed in Paris in 1841, features the ghostly Wilis?

Giselle premiered in June 1841 to music by Adolphe Adam; in Act II the Wilis, ghosts of jilted maidens led by Myrtha, dance men to death, and only Giselle's love saves Albrecht.

Which 1870 comic ballet by Léo Delibes centres on a lifelike doll?

Coppélia made a star of 16-year-old Giuseppina Bozzacchi as Swanhilda, but war closed the theatre within months and she died of smallpox on her 17th birthday.

Who choreographed the original 1890 production of The Sleeping Beauty?

Marius Petipa wrote out a very detailed list of the music he needed for The Sleeping Beauty, and the composer worked fast to fill the order.

Which 1910 ballet for the Ballets Russes made the young Stravinsky internationally famous?

The Firebird went to the little-known Stravinsky only after the company's earlier choices of composer fell through; its premiere was an immediate success and made his name.

Which 1877 ballet set in India features the celebrated 'Kingdom of the Shades' scene?

La Bayadère's Kingdom of the Shades is an opium dream: the grieving warrior Solor sees his dead beloved Nikiya among ghosts who file on one by one until they fill the stage.

Which Russian-born choreographer is styled the father of American ballet?

George Balanchine was brought to the US in 1933 by arts patron Lincoln Kirstein and had a ballet school open within three months, 14 years before the pair founded New York City Ballet.

Which company is generally considered the world's oldest national ballet company?

The Paris Opera Ballet grew out of an opera academy chartered in 1669; its dancers were all men until 1681, when Mademoiselle de Lafontaine became the first professional ballerina.

Which Ballets Russes star choreographed L'après-midi d'un faune in 1912?

Vaslav Nijinsky danced the faun himself; the editor of Le Figaro denounced its erotic final gesture on his front page, while the sculptor Rodin stood up to cheer and defended him.

Which English ballerina was named prima ballerina assoluta of the Royal Ballet?

Margot Fonteyn was 42 and considering retirement when she first partnered Rudolf Nureyev, 19 years her junior, in 1962; the pairing became a sensation and kept her dancing until 1979.

Which retired Royal Ballet ballerina later became a judge on the BBC's celebrity ballroom contest?

Darcey Bussell became a Royal Ballet principal at 20, straight after creating the lead in Kenneth MacMillan's The Prince of the Pagodas; she retired in 2007 and joined the BBC panel in 2012.

Which choreographer's 1995 Swan Lake cast men as the swans?

Matthew Bourne cast men because a swan's strength and wingspan struck him as closer to a male dancer's build, and he wanted the birds' aggressive side as well as their beauty.

Which choreographer founded his namesake American Dance Theater in 1958?

Alvin Ailey built his signature work Revelations in 1960 from what he called 'blood memories' of his childhood in rural Texas and its Baptist church, where spirituals were sung.

Which composer was Merce Cunningham's lifelong partner and frequent collaborator?

John Cage and Cunningham worked together for some fifty years, using chance procedures and insisting that a dance and its music need not be coordinated, so each was often made apart.

Twyla Tharp's Broadway dance musical Movin' Out is set to the songs of which artist?

Billy Joel's songs carry the whole show, yet none of Tharp's dancers sing: a pianist and band above the stage perform every vocal while the cast dances the story of Long Island friends in the Vietnam era.

Which choreographer shared the Best Director Oscar for West Side Story with Robert Wise?

Jerome Robbins was fired partway through filming, with the film behind schedule and over budget, yet still shared the directing Oscar with Wise and took an honorary one for his choreography.

Pina Bausch's Tanztheater company was based in which German city?

Wuppertal hired Bausch to run its ballet in 1973 and she stayed until her death in 2009; Wim Wenders's 3D film Pina then filmed her dancers around the city and on its hanging railway.

Which anthropologist-choreographer was called the 'queen mother of black dance'?

Katherine Dunham trained as an anthropologist in Chicago and studied dance across the Caribbean; in 1992, in her eighties, she fasted for 47 days in protest at US treatment of Haitian refugees.

Ruth St. Denis founded a pioneering Los Angeles dance school in 1915 with which partner?

Ted Shawn married St. Denis in 1914 and the pair fused their surnames into the Denishawn school; after they separated he formed an all-male company, Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers.

Which Hollywood choreographer was famous for kaleidoscopic overhead shots of showgirls?

Busby Berkeley learned to move crowds as a First World War artillery lieutenant drilling 1,200 soldiers, then arranged chorus lines into geometric patterns filmed from directly above.

Gene Kelly co-directed and choreographed Singin' in the Rain (1952) with whom?

Stanley Donen first met Kelly as a teenage chorus dancer in Broadway's Pal Joey; the film they later made together was ranked number one on the American Film Institute's 2006 list of movie musicals.

Whose 'Jumpin' Jive' routine in Stormy Weather (1943) is called one of film's greatest?

The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, leapfrog down a staircase into full splits in Jumpin' Jive; Fred Astaire reportedly called it the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen.

Which performer's costume of a short skirt of artificial bananas became a Jazz Age icon?

Josephine Baker wore the banana skirt at the Folies Bergère; she later took French nationality, smuggled intelligence for the Resistance and in 2021 became the first Black woman honoured in the Panthéon.

Which tap dancer choreographed the Broadway show Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk?

Savion Glover was 22 when the revue, which tells Black history from slavery onward through tap, won him the Tony for choreography; he later danced the motion capture for Mumble in Happy Feet.

Which celebrated tap dancer starred in the 1989 film Tap and played Ben on Will & Grace?

Gregory Hines started tapping at two and was performing with his brother Maurice as a child; Tap's challenge scene gave cameos to veteran hoofers of the generation before him.

Which music video was the first selected for the US National Film Registry, in 2009?

Thriller cost far more than any earlier music video, so MTV and Showtime paid to license a making-of documentary that helped cover the cost.

Which music video became the first on YouTube to reach a billion views, in December 2012?

Gangnam Style passed a billion views on 21 December 2012; two years later it went beyond 2,147,483,647, the most YouTube's counter could store, and the site had to upgrade it.

Krumping was created in the early 2000s in which part of Los Angeles?

South Central Los Angeles gave rise to krumping as a harder-edged offshoot of clowning, the style Tommy the Clown devised in 1992 to liven up his act at children's birthday parties.

Which dance troupe beat Susan Boyle to win Britain's Got Talent in 2009?

Diversity, the street-dance troupe choreographed by Ashley Banjo, pulled off an upset: Susan Boyle had been the clear favourite to win the final.

So You Think You Can Dance was created by which two American Idol producers?

Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe reused their Idol formula for dance; Lythgoe, who also judged the show, had himself been a dancer and choreographer with the Young Generation troupe.

Van McCoy's 1975 chart-topper took its name from which disco dance?

The Hustle was a New York club dance before it was a record: Van McCoy wrote the tune after his music partner watched patrons doing it at the Adam's Apple nightclub.

Which Latin dance did bandleader Pérez Prado popularise in the 1950s?

Mambo made Pérez Prado's name after he moved to Mexico and developed it with his big band; billed as the King of the Mambo, he topped the US chart for ten weeks in 1955 with Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.

Cumbia is said to come from Afro-descendant funeral traditions in which country?

Colombia's Caribbean coast is where cumbia took shape, mixing African drums, Indigenous gaita flutes and European influences; exported across Latin America, it now has local versions from Mexico to Argentina.

The conga line derives from a carnival dance of which country?

Cuba's carnival troupes, the comparsas, danced the conga through the streets; bandleader Desi Arnaz, later the star of I Love Lucy, popularised the conga line in the United States.

The limbo is based on traditions from which Caribbean nation?

Trinidad and Tobago's limbo began as a ritual at wakes, not a party game; dancer Julia Edwards and her troupe made it a nightclub act in the 1950s and danced it in the 1957 film Fire Down Below.

The sirtaki dance was choreographed for which 1964 film?

Zorba the Greek's famous dance is no ancient tradition: the sirtaki was made up for the film from syrtos and hasapiko steps, set to music by Mikis Theodorakis.

Dabke is a line dance from which region?

The Levant's dabke is a stamping line dance seen at weddings from Lebanon to Palestine; one theory traces the stomp to villagers treading down the mud roofs of their houses together.

Bhangra is a folk dance from which region of the Indian subcontinent?

Punjab's harvest dance, bhangra, is performed to the double-headed dhol drum at the April festival of Vaisakhi; Punjabi migrants in Britain later fused it with pop and took it worldwide.

Kathakali is a traditional dance-theatre form native to which Indian state?

Kerala's Kathakali has its actors mime in silence while vocalists sing the verses, and a face-paint code tells you who is who: green for noble heroes, a red beard for villains.

Which classical dance, known for the three-bend tribhangi posture, comes from eastern India?

Odissi began in the temples of Odisha, where maharis danced for the deity Jagannath; suppressed under colonial rule, it was revived and reconstructed after Indian independence.

Which Japanese theatre form began around 1603 with Izumo no Okuni's troupe of women dancing in a dry Kyoto riverbed?

Kabuki began with Okuni's all-female troupe, but women were banned from its stage in 1629 and it grew into the all-male form performed today.

The hopak began as a male dance of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in which present-day country?

Ukraine's hopak began as a dance for Cossack men only, but couples, soloists and mixed groups later took it up, and it is now popularly called the country's national dance.

Which English folk dance is first recorded in 1448, in a payment by London's Goldsmiths' Company?

Morris dance first appears as seven shillings paid to its dancers in 1448; in 1600 the clown Will Kemp morris-danced all the way from London to Norwich, a stunt he called his Nine Days Wonder.

Which Paris nightspot's star can-can dancer was La Goulue?

The Moulin Rouge and La Goulue share the title of Toulouse-Lautrec's first poster, from 1891; pasted on walls across the city, it brought the painter fame.

The mazurka is a stylised folk-dance form from which country?

Poland's mazurka went from village dance to concert hall when Chopin wrote dozens of them for piano; the national anthem, known as Dąbrowski's Mazurka, is one too.

Which French composer wrote the 1928 orchestral dance work Boléro?

Maurice Ravel wrote Boléro as a ballet score for the dancer Ida Rubinstein: one long, gradual crescendo that he himself described as 'orchestral tissue without music'.

Which dance theorist devised a notation system for recording human movement, published in 1928?

Rudolf von Laban's system, now called Labanotation, lets a dance be read back from the page; Hanya Holm's score of her dances for Kiss Me, Kate became the first choreography copyrighted in the US.

Which party-dance hit did Chicago's DJ Casper first write as a step aerobics routine for his nephew?

Cha-Cha Slide began as a workout for DJ Casper's nephew, a trainer at a Chicago Bally Total Fitness club; it spread from gyms to dance floors and topped the UK chart in 2004.

In Flashdance (1983), Jennifer Beals' character Alex works by day at what?

Alex Owens welds by day at a Pittsburgh steel mill and dances at a bar by night. Her dance scenes used doubles, chiefly Marine Jahan, and breaker Crazy Legs performed the audition backspin.

In Footloose (1984), Kevin Bacon's Ren McCormack moves to which fictional town?

Bomont's dancing ban, pushed through by John Lithgow's Reverend Moore, echoes a real one: Elmore City, Oklahoma, had outlawed dancing from its founding in 1898 until students won a prom in 1980.

Who directed Black Swan (2010), in which Natalie Portman plays ballerina Nina Sayers?

Darren Aronofsky saw the film as a companion piece to his earlier The Wrestler, both about the demands of performing; ballet soloist Sarah Lane served as Natalie Portman's dance double.

Billy Elliot is set in County Durham during which event?

The 1984–85 miners' strike has Billy's father and brother on the picket line in the fictional pit town of Everington; his father even tries to cross it to pay for Billy's ballet-school audition.

Which actor starred with Jenna Dewan in the 2006 dance film Step Up?

Channing Tatum met Jenna Dewan on the set and the two married in 2009; before acting he had worked as a stripper, the job he went on to play in Magic Mike.

A Chorus Line opened on Broadway in 1975 with music by whom?

Marvin Hamlisch scored a show built from some twenty hours of taped sessions in which Broadway dancers told their own stories; several of those dancers ended up in the original cast.

Napoleon Dynamite's election-skit dance is performed to which Jamiroquai song?

Canned Heat plays as Napoleon dances the skit for Pedro's class-president campaign; Jon Heder improvised the routine, dancing it three times so the best pieces of each could be cut together.

In which city were the Radio City Rockettes founded in 1925, as the Missouri Rockets?

Russell Markert founded the troupe in St. Louis in 1925 as the Missouri Rockets, inspired by Britain's Tiller Girls but wanting taller dancers capable of eye-high kicks; they moved to Radio City Music Hall in 1932.

Which New York event first featured the Rockettes in 1957?

The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade has been a Rockettes fixture since 1957; impresario 'Roxy' Rothafel had brought the troupe to New York and named it the Roxyettes after himself before it settled at Radio City in 1932.

Zumba was created in the 1990s by aerobics instructor Beto Pérez in which city, known as a salsa capital?

Cali is where Beto Pérez, teaching aerobics in the 1990s, forgot his usual music one day and ran the class to salsa and merengue tapes instead; he called the result Rumbacize before it became Zumba.

Which company introduced Dance Dance Revolution in Japan in 1998?

Konami's arcade hit was enough of a workout that in 2006 West Virginia began bringing Dance Dance Revolution into its public schools as a fitness programme, starting with the middle schools.

Which Cotton Club bandleader's 1934 song gives the Oxford English Dictionary its first recorded use of 'jitter bug'?

Cab Calloway's 1934 song 'Jitter Bug' probably meant someone who has the jitters; within a few years the word had passed to swing fans and then to the dance itself.

Which dance first drew national attention in America on the Midway of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair?

Belly dance was performed on the fair's Street in Cairo; Sol Bloom, the 23-year-old in charge of the Midway, is said to have made up the 'snake charmer' tune still tied to it and later sat in Congress.

The Electric Slide is danced to 'Electric Boogie', a song written by which reggae musician?

Bunny Wailer, a founding member of the Wailers with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, wrote Electric Boogie for Marcia Griffiths, who recorded it in 1982; a 1989 remix reached No. 51 on the Hot 100 and became her biggest single.

Which publisher launched the Just Dance video game series in November 2009?

Ubisoft grew Just Dance out of a dancing minigame in its Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party, judging moves with the Wii Remote players already owned instead of a dance mat.

The Chicken Dance, a favourite at American Oktoberfest events, was composed by an accordionist from which country?

Switzerland's Werner Thomas wrote it in 1957 as The Duck Dance. The chicken is said to date from a 1981 Oktoberfest in Tulsa, where a TV station supplied a chicken costume.

In a Chinese New Year dragon dance, the dragon is usually led by a performer holding a ball that represents what?

A pearl stands for wisdom here, so the figure called 'dragon chasing the pearl' shows the dragon forever in pursuit of it.

In which ballroom dance does the leader play a matador while the follower usually represents his cape?

Paso doble never casts the follower as the bull, a common misconception. Its march-like music was not played at bullfights until the 19th century.

American Bandstand, the teen dance show hosted by Dick Clark, was broadcast until 1964 from which US city?

Philadelphia was home to the show from its 1952 debut as a local programme called Bandstand. It went national in 1957 and moved west to Los Angeles in 1964.

Which TV music show, created by Chicago newsreader Don Cornelius, had dancers strut down a space between two lines?

Soul Train aired nationally in syndication from 1971 to 2006, and its opening titles claimed the longest first-run syndicated run in American television history.

Which animated film follows Mumble, an emperor penguin who cannot sing a note but can tap dance?

Happy Feet won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and the first BAFTA Award ever given for Best Animated Film.

Which Disney film stages a comic ballet of ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators to Dance of the Hours?

Fantasia's lead ostrich was modelled on the ballerina Irina Baronova, and the music comes from Ponchielli's opera La Gioconda.

Which Beyoncé video, shot in black and white, adapted a 1969 Bob Fosse routine called 'Mexican Breakfast'?

Single Ladies won Video of the Year at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. The Fosse original featured his wife, Gwen Verdon, dancing with two other women.

Rapper 2 Milly and actor Alfonso Ribeiro both sued the makers of which video game for selling their dances as emotes?

Fortnite sells its dance emotes for an in-game currency called V-Bucks, and NFL players have copied them as touchdown celebrations.

The Oscar-winning 'Naatu Naatu' dance number in the film RRR was shot outside the presidential palace of which country?

Ukraine hosted the shoot at Kyiv's Mariinskyi Palace in August 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion began.

Which arm-swinging dance did 'Backpack Kid' Russell Horning perform beside Katy Perry on Saturday Night Live in 2017?

The Floss first went viral through a video Horning made in August 2016, when he was 14, months before his television appearance.

Which hip-hop move did quarterback Cam Newton turn into an eight-second touchdown celebration against the Titans?

The Dab is usually traced to Atlanta's hip-hop scene, where the trio Migos first claimed to have invented it and later credited the rapper Skippa Da Flippa.

Which shuffling hip-hop step, said to come from Oakland, was a concert trademark of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice?

The Running Man imitates a jogger going nowhere: the dancer steps forward, then slides the front foot straight back while pumping both fists.

Which dance move did striker Peter Crouch adopt as his England goal celebration in the summer of 2006?

The Robot got another airing after his hat-trick against Jamaica, but Crouch then shelved it, saying he would do it again only if England won the World Cup.

On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Alfonso Ribeiro's character usually danced 'The Carlton' to which Tom Jones hit?

It's Not Unusual set the pace for a routine Ribeiro said he modelled on Courteney Cox in a Bruce Springsteen video and on an Eddie Murphy stand-up bit.

Which Australian city gave its name to a rave shuffle step later referenced in LMFAO's 2011 hit 'Party Rock Anthem'?

Melbourne's rave and club scene developed the step in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some two decades before the song put it in front of a global audience.

Which rock and roll guitarist made the duckwalk famous, having first done it as a child to amuse his family?

Chuck Berry said a journalist gave the move its name after his first New York show. AC/DC's Angus Young later borrowed it as a one-legged hop.

Which hip-swivelling singer was filmed only from the waist up on his third Ed Sullivan Show appearance, in January 1957?

Elvis Presley disliked the nickname his stage moves earned him, 'Elvis the Pelvis', and called it childish.

Which rapper's 2015 hit 'Watch Me' strings together the Whip, the Nae Nae and the Stanky Legg?

Silentó shot the video in a high school gymnasium with cheerleaders and dance crews, and cut in clips of the moves sent by viewers.

Which Savoy Ballroom regular performed the first aerial in a swing dance contest, a back-to-back roll, in 1935?

Frankie Manning flipped his partner, Frieda Washington, over his back while Chick Webb's band played a tune he had requested for the moment.

Which 1960s TV superhero danced a Watusi spoof by drawing two fingers of each hand across his masked eyes?

Batman's version was called the Batusi, and its star, Adam West, claimed credit for the moves. John Travolta echoes it in his Pulp Fiction dance scene.

The Watusi, a solo dance craze of the early 1960s, borrowed a former name for which African people?

Tutsi dancers appear in the 1950 film King Solomon's Mines, which may have inspired the name. The Orlons took 'The Wah-Watusi' to No. 2 in 1962.

Which Manhattan nightclub, house venue of Joey Dee and the Starliters, became the launchpad of the Twist craze?

Peppermint Lounge drew Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote and even the elusive Greta Garbo, and the house band's 'Peppermint Twist' spent three weeks at No. 1 in 1962.

Which singer, once a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin, took 'The Loco-Motion' to No. 1 in 1962?

Little Eva recorded it as a demo meant for another singer. The song later returned to the American top three for Grand Funk Railroad and Kylie Minogue.

Which Motown singer's 1962 single 'Hitch Hike' sparked a brief dance craze among the American Bandstand audience?

Marvin Gaye co-wrote the song, and it gave him his first top forty pop single when it reached number thirty in 1963.

Which soul singer had the highest-charting version of 'Land of 1000 Dances', which names the Pony and the Watusi?

Wilson Pickett cut it in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and it became his biggest pop hit, peaking at No. 6.

Which Sunset Strip nightclub, opened in 1964, had its DJ spin records from a cage hung beside the stage?

Whisky a Go Go helped popularise go-go dancing, and one of its first dancers designed the classic uniform of fringed dress and white boots.

Which future funk bandleader co-wrote and produced Bobby Freeman's 1964 dance-craze hit 'C'mon and Swim'?

Sly Stone was still working under his birth name, Sylvester Stewart, when he wrote the song with Thomas Coman.

Which teenage singer followed her million-selling 1962 debut 'Mashed Potato Time' with a sequel about gravy?

Dee Dee Sharp took the debut to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and later married Kenny Gamble of the hit-making duo Gamble & Huff.

Which novelty line dance with called steps features in both the John Waters film Hairspray and its Broadway musical?

The Madison was created in Columbus, Ohio, in 1957 and spread nationally after The Buddy Deane Show in Baltimore picked it up in 1960.

What nickname was given to the young women of the 1920s who bobbed their hair and danced to jazz?

Flappers were said to dance like birds, flapping their arms, and one critic of the day called them frivolous, irresponsible and undisciplined.

Which bandleader's 1935 run at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles is often described as the start of the swing era?

Benny Goodman, a clarinettist, was soon crowned the 'King of Swing' by the press, a title a drum company had first used to sell his drummer, Gene Krupa.

Which bandleader recorded the big-band dance standard 'In the Mood' and vanished over the English Channel in 1944?

Glenn Miller's 1939 recording is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and NPR named it one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.

Which slow line dance, made famous by American Bandstand, sent each couple down an aisle between two rows of dancers?

The Stroll reminded the host, Dick Clark, of the Virginia reel, and The Diamonds had a hit named after it early in 1958.

Which family R&B group made 'Twist and Shout' a hit in 1962, before the Beatles covered it?

The Isley Brothers reworked a song first recorded in 1961 by the Top Notes, whose version never became a hit.

Which Manhattan disco, opened by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager in 1977, was built inside a former opera house?

Studio 54 opened in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House and spent decades as a CBS television soundstage before the dance floor moved in.

Which synth-pop band's 1982 hit 'The Safety Dance' protested against club bouncers who stopped people pogoing?

Men Without Hats singer Ivan Doroschuk wrote it after he was ejected from a club for pogo dancing, which bouncers saw as a danger to the disco dancers.

Which pop star's 1990 single 'Vogue' was inspired by dancers she saw voguing at New York's Sound Factory club?

Madonna wrote and produced the song with Shep Pettibone, borrowing a dance that had spread through New York City in the late 1980s.

Which teenage rapper's 2007 hit 'Crank That' caused what was called the biggest dance fad since the Macarena?

Soulja Boy spent seven weeks at number one with it, and an instructional YouTube video for the dance passed 27 million views by early 2008.

On which app did the 'Renegade', a dance created by Jalaiah Harmon, become a viral challenge in late 2019?

TikTok users made millions of videos to the track behind it, K Camp's 'Lottery', though Harmon at first got no credit for her steps.

Which people of Kenya and Tanzania perform the adumu, in which young warriors take turns leaping straight up?

Maasai warriors are thought to have developed the dance to prepare for combat, and each jumper keeps his body as straight and upright as possible.

Which circle dance, brought from Southeast Europe and popular on early kibbutzim, is usually performed to 'Hava Nagila'?

The hora could go on for hours on a kibbutz, and Jewish immigrants had already carried it to North America in the early 20th century.

Kecak, a chanting dance performed by a circle of up to 150 people retelling the Ramayana, comes from which island?

Bali's kecak is also known as the monkey chant: the chorus shouts 'chak' while acting out a battle in which monkey-like warriors help Prince Rama.

Gumboot dancing began as a code of boot slaps used by gold miners who were forbidden to talk, in which country?

South Africa's mines were deafening and talking was harshly punished, so the workers tapped messages on their wellington boots instead.

In the folk dance tinikling, performers hop between two bamboo poles tapped and slid together, in which country?

Philippines tradition names the dance after the tikling, a long-legged rail, and the dancers copy the bird dodging bamboo traps set by rice farmers.

The whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order, founded in Konya, follow the teachings of which 13th-century Persian poet?

Rumi's followers founded the order in what is now Turkey, and its members whirl as a form of dhikr, the remembrance of God.

Which country's royal ballet, whose performers are popularly called apsara dancers, faced near extinction in the 1970s?

Cambodia's court dance was almost wiped out under the Khmer Rouge, and UNESCO proclaimed it a masterpiece of intangible heritage in 2003.

Bon Odori, danced in a circle around a wooden scaffold each summer in Japan, remembers and honours whose spirits?

Family ancestors are believed to revisit the household altars during Obon, a holiday when people travel home and clean the family graves.

The sardana, a hand-holding circle dance of carefully counted sideways steps, belongs to which region of Spain?

Catalonia took up the dance from its Empordà district in the late 19th century, after the musician Josep Maria Ventura i Casas modernised it.

The cueca, a handkerchief-twirling dance that mimics a rooster courting a hen, is the national dance of which country?

Chile gave the cueca its official status by government decree in 1979, and later set aside 17 September as National Cueca Day.