The Twist was a non-contact dance and became the biggest dance craze of the 1960s - world wide. The dance can be described as an arm action of drying yourself from behind in a side-to-side motion with a towel whilst butting out a cigarette on the ground with your foot. The Twist movement can be seen in dances as far back as the 1920's Charleston which makes sense as to why the flapper shimmy dress of the same era made a re-appearance at the same time as The Twist . The dress was perfect for the dance with the fringes splaying out to either side as you twisted your body. It became a favourite costume for go-go dancers.
Decent society thought that the Twist was too sexy and that only the lower class would do such a dance. In Britain parents claimed that no 'nice' girl would consider doing the Twist. But soon high society and movie stars were doing it and mingling with these so-called lower class people at places like the Peppermint Lounge where once on the dance floor the class structure was non-existent. People tried to break records with their dancing. In England teenagers boarded a steamer called the Royal Daffodil and twisted across the channel to France.
The Twist rode the big wave for a while. The song left the music charts only to return again. After 'The Twist' came 'Let's Twist Again' and 'Slow Twistin', "La Paloma Twist', 'Twistin' USA,' Joey Dee and the Starliters, 'Peppermint Twist' and many others. Suddenly new dances and songs started to appear, all hoping to be the next big craze.
Anybody could create a dance and every city and school campus was known for its own. There was the Frug, the Shimmy, the Mashed Potato, the Madison, the Monkey and the Hully Gully. London had a dance known as the Creep, the Caribbean had the Meringue, New York had the Kangaroo and Harvard University made the Penguin popular. Different countries would have slight variations of the one dance. There was the Italian Twist, the American Twist, the French Twist and the English Twist which was a cross between both the American and French Twists. Many dances contained the twist motion and you can see this in such dances as the Locomotion, the Waddle, the Mashed Potato, the Hand Jive, the Shake and others.
The idea of a dance craze was to have somebody come up with a move and give it a name. A song would be written and recorded with lyrics telling you how to do the dance. Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell were well know for their dance songs. Bobby had the Cha-Cha-Cha, Sway and the Fish while Chubby had the Fly, the Pony, the Limbo and various Twist numbers.
Many countries banned dances for being improper. In Russia they thought that the Shake was going to lead their youth down the path of anarchy. Sometimes dances were banned because they were simply bad taste. One such dance was the Spastic. It contained stiff and jerky movements and was an imitation of handicapped people. How politically incorrect!
In England there was a dance step known as the Philip named after Prince Philip. It belonged to a dance called the Blues and was danced to Blues music. To start the dance you'd relax your body, put on an expressionless face, and face your partner without touching. You then swung your hips side to side and twitched your hands and feet and head. Next, you bent forward and clasped your hands behind your back.
The popular dance in Australia in the early 1960s was the surfer Stomp. Little Pattie made a few surf and stomp records and even television personality Jimmy Hannon and dancer Sir Robert Helpman gave the surf tunes a go. Australia held its first of many stomp-a-thons in October 1963 at Surf City with 92 teenagers stomping it out for 24 hours. Left, left, right, right.
Go-Go was the main dance style of the 1960s and originated from the jazz and rock 'n' roll scenes of the 1950's. It was the next phase from the dance crazes of the early 60s except this time there weren't any strict instructions on how to do the dancing. It was very much free-form - do as you like as long as it is fast. Go! Go! Go! Like most dances of the period it was condemned by the older generation as improper and immoral because of its frenzied movements. With the Twist and other dances of the early 60s came a uniformity where everybody did the same moves to a dance. By the mid-60s people were bored with this and decided to do their own 'thing'. If it was frenzied or fast it was called go-go.
Along with the arrival of go-go was the discotheque. The discotheque is said to have originated out of Europe going back to World War II and was a place where people danced not to bands but recordings or discs. This idea was the foundation for the Whisky-A-Go-Go nightclub in the USA which had chapters all over the country as well as internationally including France, Greece and Australia (Brisbane, Kings Cross and St. Kilda).
The first known go-go dancer is documented as being a female DJ at the Whisky A-Go-Go night club. The DJ box was perched up above the patrons and when the DJ played a disc she started to dance. And so the go-go dancer was born. Discotheques displayed dance cages with girls dancing about in them. The cages were a connotation of the dancer being likened to a wild animal.
Go-Go:
Generally, the dances of the 1960s come under the heading of go-go dancing. When you stick all the moves together and dance to fast paced music you've got go-go. It's just shaking with loose limbs.
Go-go dancing was not just confined to discotheques and night club floors. You saw it in movies, such as the American International films with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, Elvis movies, on your local beach, parties, carnivals, dance marathons, dancers accompanying bands at town halls, television music shows such as Bandstand, Ready Steady Go! and Shindig!. Go-Go Dancers also appeared in shopping centres and department stores where the young models would not only provide enjoyable entertainment and demonstrations, but advertise the latest teenage and discotheque wear.
Two big names of go-go in Australia during the 1960s were Denise Drysdale and Pat Wordsworth. Denise Drysdale was Australia's first go-go dancer . She was a dark-haired beauty who toured Vietnam along with Patti McGrath (Newton) and demonstrated the latest dances on shows such as Kommotion. Pat Wordsworth, nicknamed the 'Big Pretzel', toured Vietnam during 1966 with Bobby Limb's entourage and was known for showing her dancing abilities to our troops in a fringed bikini and bleached blonde hair. Most people thought she was a stripper although she firmly denied it.
Go-Go ended in the early 70s to make way for a new form of dancing called 'disco'. From then on if you ever saw advertisements proclaiming a club had 'go-go girls', it generally meant strippers. Today, the word go-go dancer belongs to people (yes men too, but mainly women) who perform in skimpy clothing and generally dance in a provocative manner. Burlesque, strippers, hip-hop style go-go and sixties hybrid go-go are today's common type of go-go dancers.
For further information on 1960s dancers, places and other interesting things, refer to the Go-Go-Ology page.
