Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The latest dance rage. From Wikipedia:

Twerking is a “dance move that involves a person shaking their upper hips and lower hips in an up and down bouncing motion, causing them to shake, ‘wobble’ and ‘jiggle.'” To “twerk” means to “dance in a sexually suggestive fashion by twisting the hips”.

The word “twerking” may be derived from one of two sources:

a contraction of “footwork”, or
a portmanteau of twist and jerk.

Ties have been made to many traditional African dances.

… Twerking was introduced into hip-hop culture by way of the New Orleans bounce music scene. In 1993 DJ Jubilee recorded the dance tune “Do The Jubilee All” in which he chanted, “Twerk baby, twerk baby, twerk, twerk, twerk.” The video for the song increased the popularity of twerking. In 1995 New Orleans-based rapper Cheeky Blakk recorded the song “Twerk Something”, a call-and-response dance song dedicated to twerking. In 1997 DJ Jubilee recorded “Get Ready, Ready” in which he encouraged listeners to “Twerk it!”.

A great amount of credit for the expansion of twerking outside of New Orleans can be given to strip clubs in Houston and Atlanta.

Twerkers were predominantly black and female for quite some time, but now a major exponent of twerking is the very white Miley Cyrus, and men (both straight and gay, of various races and ethnicities) have gotten into shaking their booties. Here’s Julian Serrano (Juju) moving his butt in the hot video Julian Serrano Pretty Gang Twerk:

  (#1)

A still from this video (Serrano twerking his way through household chores):

(#2)

Serrano is also featured in the hilarious video Twerking to Classical Part 2: High Class Male Makeover (clips of twerkmen doing their thing, set to the William Tell Overture), here (#3).

This entry was posted on July 13, 2013 at 6:02 am and is filed under Clipping, Dance, Language and the body, Pop culture, Portmanteaus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.