Episode 1 Pop's Greatest Dance Crazes

Dancing is super-fun. It's a form of expression and it's cool.

Oh, I know this song. Let's do the routine to it! It brings everyone together. It's great.

Having a dance craze gives us that chance to do something all together and all feel like we're one animal.

There's been so many great dance crazes, and I've partaken in most of them.

It's fun, it's something that everyone can do.

Oh, it's camp as Christmas.

You can just do you thing, you know what I'm saying?

Dance is a way to free the soul and ease the mind.

The moment these songs start, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Better to slap on a smile and get stuck in, I reckon.

Hello. I'm TV's Robert Webb - actor, writer, and as I'm going to reminding you hundreds of times

over the course of the next hour, a highly accomplished dancer.

It's a combination of skills that makes me the perfect...ly adequate choice

to host Pop's Greatest Dance Crazes, a countdown of the songs that have

got you bopping like idiots at office parties, wedding discos, or alone in your front room, drunk.

But who decides which dance crazes are best? Some know-it-all panel of so-called experts? Yes, actually.

And together, these specialists and BBC3 viewers have picked out the hippest, the sexiest, the quirkiest

and, let's be honest, the gayest dance crazes from over the last 40 years.

So finish your drink, kick off your shoes and join me

on a journey towards the craziest of all pop's great dance crazes.

Hit it.

Five, four, three, two, one.

The dance routine from Rhythm Nation, for me, was life-changing.

Oh, it would just sort of make me feel so excited to watch that dance.

The noise of it was just great.

You know, all of them together, it was just such an amazing video, so striking.

# With music by our side To break the colour lines... #

The dance routine for Rhythm Nation was very...

intricate. It was very different for that time.

The discipline in that video is incredible.

They move in one wave and one formation together.

# We are a part of the Rhythm Nation. #

I suppose she's singing about being part of a Rhythm Nation, a nation

entirely founded on the rules of dance.

But, you know, even the rules of dance has to be strictly enforced

if you're going to dance in time with one another to that extent.

Taking a leaf out of her brother's book, the song's message is one of peace and racial harmony.

So, naturally, it features military uniforms and nunchucks.

That was me.

I was the dancer using the nunchucks, yes.

I just felt that it fit the video. It was my version of this military vibe.

You know, you need an element of menace.

Even in the world of dance, power can corrupt.

Maybe that's the message.

It was very robotic and accurate,

and it's the first time we saw her do a little pop-and-lock.

Ooh, technical.

It's very important that your fingers stay together, your elbows stay in, and then we hit -

sharp, sharp, sharp.

# Sing it if you want a better way of life. #

I think it's a wonderful craze,

but I think it's a really difficult one to sort of start up

and bring onto a dance floor.

I think, by yourself, you'd suddenly just be coming into

a bit of a military, you know, and bang, bang, bang, you know,

and arms sort of giving it large.

It's not the most intimate of dances, let's just say that.

At 49, the Spice Girls, the group who tapped into the mid-'90s ladette phenomenon.

When they sang Spice Up Your Life, it wasn't the plea for women to become independent,

it was just telling them to go for a vindaloo after a skinful of lager.

Girl power.

Wooo!

-Girl power!

-They were just huge. They were like a force.

# When you're feeling sad and low... #

It was five young, loud, in-your-face girls

thinking they were going to change the world, and they did at one time.

They did actually change the world, and the world was at their feet.

A lot of people were copying just the way they acted,

and little girls wanted to be Sporty,

or little girls wanted to be Baby Spice.

# Slam it to the left If you're having a good time... #

A generation of young girls spiced up their lives and learnt some funky new dance moves.

It was important for us when we were doing our choreography.

We wanted to keep the dance routines quite simple, because we wanted people to be able

to copy them and to do them along with us at home and stuff.

First of all, some classic Spice Girls moves. One, two, cha cha cha.

Two, two, cha cha cha. OK, got that?

Then you can add the arms, you can freestyle a little bit.

Cha cha cha,

and then let out the song. Are you ready?

# La-la-la, la-la-la la-la-la

# La-la-la, la-la-la-la. #

A little bit like that.

# Spice up your life! Aaah!

# Slam it to the left If you're having a good time... #

Slam it to the left and shake it to the right.

I was shaking it everywhere from Europe to New York.

You couldn't stop me.

# Yo! I'll tell you what I want... #

Each Spice Girl had her own unique persona, which gave them highly individual dancing styles.

Who can forget Scary, Sporty and Arthritic!

# I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really, really wanna zigazig-a. #

Loads of people think that we had our Spice names

and we lived up to that, but what really happened was

we'd just presented ourselves as the individuals that we were

and we were named by Top Of The Pops magazine, and those names just stuck.

# Make it last forever Friendship never ends. #

With those characters that they created came their own specific dance. That was really clever.

# That's the way it is. #

Victoria's, of course, is the point and pout.

Posh Spice would always do stuff like that and look away.

Victoria Beckham was famous for not really dancing at all.

She'd just point at things, presumably at things that

she was later just going to get David Beckham to buy her.

Scary Spice was just - rrarrgh! Very animalistic.

She growled, she always screamed at the camera.

She did the high kicks and stuff like that.

Emma had lots of very cutesy maybe like little shushes.

Emma was a good dancer.

She really knew how to get down.

Geri's, of course, was the peace sign which we all adopted.

Geri had no rhythm, couldn't put one foot in front of the other.

It was a little bit unfair, because four of us girls had had dance training and Geri hadn't,

so we used to do a bit of extra rehearsing, myself and Geri.

Sporty Spice's signature moves - well, of course, who can forget the back-flip,

performed a few times on tables.

Wide stance, point up to the sky - that was a bit of a Sporty.

The punch, that's a bit of a Sporty and then the signature kick, yeah!

I've still got it!

# You have got to give. #

They all had their own little moves, you know, then they'd all come

together with something easy, that I think teenagers could pick up on.

# You gotta, you gotta you gotta... #

We've worked with some of the world's best choreographers and we always have had these really

difficult routines, but we just make them easier!

We learn them and just go, "Can we just make it a bit easier? Because our fans,

"we need to make it easy for our fans," but it was just because we were lazy!

You can't sing and do all that, that's why everyone mimes.

# If you wanna be my lover. #

# When the sun shines we'll shine together

# Told you I'll be here forever

# Said I'll always be your friend... #

Let's not beat around the bush.

Our next dance craze is raunchy.

Gene Kelly used to sing in the rain, Rihanna just strips semi-naked

in the stuff and turns the sexy dial up to 11.

# Umbrella You can stand under my umbrella

# Ella ella, ay, ay, ay... #

I like the way she's doing the Fred Astaire thing with the umbrella.

She's using it as a prop.

I want to be that umbrella.

# Ella ella, ay ay ay... #

You don't have an umbrella in the club, so you have to simulate one.

You do the whole umbrella on the shoulder, the walk,

put the umbrella out to there, the umbrella out to there.

You could do whatever you want with your imaginary umbrella.

# Because when the sun shines we'll shine together... #

All my umbrellas at home are now called Rihannas!

# Always be your friend

# Took an oath I'ma stick it out to the end... #

Our next entry is Common People by Pulp,

a band whose lead singer Jarvis Cocker concocted choreography for...

Hang on, I think I just made up a tongue twister.

Cocker concocted choreography. Cocker concocted choreography.

Cocker concocted choreography. Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

Anyway, Clocker flonkocted choreog...ty for this song on the day of the shoot itself.

# If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

# You'll never live like common people

# You'll never do whatever common people do... #

The first time I had seen Jarvis, I thought he was like

a really animated pipe cleaner.

King of the geeks!

He dances so brilliantly, but it's all just little flicks,

a little flick here and a move there.

But a few nifty little moves, a vintage suit

and some oversized bins, Jarvis made disco-dancing look cool again.

I made up a dance for the video of Common People...

..which I'll show it to you if you like.

# Sing along with the common people... #

Sing along and it might just get you...through,

because that's like you moving through double doors or something.

# Laughing at you... #

And the stupid things that you do - I don't know why we've got the windscreen wiper.

Because you think that poor is cool -

I think that's supposed to be a cool pose.

# I wanna live with common people like you... #

I made that one up on the day and managed to teach a few of the other extras in the video it.

You get the kind of vague idea.

# You better to live like common people

# You better do whatever common people do... #

The dance that they did, you enjoyed seeing it,

but it wasn't one that you copied when you were dancing to it,

because you just got so into the actual song.

# And dance and drink and screw... #

I think the indie kids understood

that that dance was meant ironically,

and therefore, to actually turn up and do that dance

would have meant that you didn't get the joke.

We had this bee in our bonnet about being a pop band and we thought,

this song has got some, whatever, socio-political relevance or whatever,

but still, it wouldn't hurt to have a dance routine that went with it.

I think you can have both things. I like the high concept and the low concept...

So I was very pleased that we had a little dance.

Our next entry features some mummified dancers doing this.

-Can I stop doing this now?

-No!

It's 1997's Around the World by French duo Daft Punk,

or to translate that name into French - Daft Punk.

It seems silly.

I'm stopping.

Daft Punk Around the World

is like a weird, modern

music box - you open up the lid and like,

"What the hell is going in here?"

It's the most bizarre video in the world.

Visually, it was amazing.

It was so simple, yet there was a lot going on.

Top pop video director Michel Gondry's vision

was to make each of the dancers represent the instruments.

It brought us some crazy choreography.

So, the synchronised swimmers are the high-pitched keyboard synth.

It's art, go with it.

What you're watching is the human representation of what Daft Punk have created digitally.

It's an incredibly clever idea.

The tall B-boys symbolise the ascending and descending bass guitar.

The mummies are dancing in time with the song's drumbeat.

The itchy skeletons are the guitars.

And the astronauts represent the robot voice

repeating that one famous vocal over and over and over again.

# Around the world Around the world... #

I used to be able to do the skeleton dance.

My favourite thing is the random spacemen

who just walk around, and when they get to the front, they get confused.

One of them turns back on himself and he goes, "No, keep going forwards."

It's a really nice little ripple of that happening, and you think it's gone wrong, but it hasn't.

Daft Punk brought robotics back - thanks Daft Punk!

Robo-dance was popular in the '80s, back when a home computer was a Sinclair ZX80 or a Commodore 64.

But if the robotic dancers really wanted to mimic computers,

they should have moved like they were about to print a spreadsheet

before freezing until they're put to sleep.

I think the robot is up there with the greatest dance crazes.

At the point the robot was revealed to the world,

I don't know a single human being who didn't then give it a go.

# Oh, Mickey, you're so fine

# You're so fine, you blow my mind Hey, Mickey! #

I love a cheerleader, don't you?

At 45 in our top 50 countdown is Mickey by Toni Basil.

She was a lady, by the way. Toni, that is, not Mickey.

# Oh, Mickey, you're so fine

# You're so fine, you blow my mind Hey, Mickey!

# Hey, Mickey! #

# Oh, Mickey, you're so fine You're so fine, you blow my mind

# Hey, Mickey! Hey, Mickey! #

Oh, I loved that, she had a ra-ra on and pom-poms.

Used to fall into splits at the end, of course. Mickey Basil.

Toni Basil, even. Whatever.

I wasn't he interested in her name, just in her skirt!

Toni Basil was choreographer to the stars before she donned her old

high-school cheerleader outfit and topped the charts in 1982 with this high-octane ditty.

# You've been around all night and that's a little long... #

When you think of Hey, Mickey, you think of high energy

and you think of a cheerleader and you think of Toni just looking hot.

I was on the floor with pom-poms and mini-skirts. Of course I did! That's a stupid question.

Pardon me for asking!

Being a cheerleader isn't easy - have you seen those American

cheerleaders and what they do? It's an art form.

# Oh, what you do, Mickey Do, Mickey

# Don't break my heart, Mickey! #

# Doo-doo-doo... #

It's actually quite a butch song, it's not the most feminine dance.

It's really - grrrrr!

# Oh, Mickey, what a pity you don't understand... #

She looks deranged throughout the dance.

"Oh, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind, hey, Mickey!"

The main bit to remember was the, that bit,

very, very, very sharp jerky movement like that.

Roll your wrist and you point at whoever you want to go home with -

it's true. It's such a macho dance!

Toni doesn't mind a bit of butch. Just take a look at the cheerleaders in her video.

I think a couple of her dancers are really quite hefty young women.

But actually she used a couple of men and dressed them up in cheerleading outfits because of all the lifting.

I didn't realise that then, maybe that's why I thought they were cute.

I thought there was something wrong. It answers a lot of questions now.

Actually, Louie, it doesn't.

That's, in fact, an urban myth.

The dancers you're drooling over were real cheerleaders from Carson High, California.

Many of the dancers in our top 50 are about freedom and fun and having

what I can only described as a gay old time, and that's fine.

There's a place for that, but it's not now,

because the only way one can successfully perform the dance

to Fatboy Slim's Praise You is with the solemnity that it deserves. I thank you.

# We've come a long, long way together

# Through the hard times and the good... #

Praise You was a guerrilla-style video

featuring the Torrance Community Dance Troupe.

This genuine-looking footage from 1999 sees them pitching up uninvited

to perform some wacky dancing on the street outside an LA cinema.

It is almost like a drama class. It isn't a dance, it's a drama class.

But they're expressing themselves through movement.

Whatever they're taking, can I have some?

There's a routine of sorts, but it's a routine unlike

anything that would come out of a professional dance studio!

The video got everyone talking.

Was it amateur footage?

Who were these people?

But those with too much time spotted Norman Cook peering into the camera

which gave the game away. Turns out they were professional dancers and the stunt was

the brainchild of troupe leader Spike Jonze - movie writer, promo director and co-creator of Jackass.

We kind of did it like burglar-style

so nobody knew that we were filming. Even the people in the theatre

didn't know we were out there doing these crazy steps.

I think it was the seriousness and how we played it

which made it even funnier, because we weren't playing it for laughs.

But you'd have to be pretty dumb to be taken in by this!

When I watch that video, it was 100% real.

They meant every moment of it, so that is genuine expression in that video.

You know when something is being faked. They were definitely mental.

I gave every step a funny name, so we would do, like,

the broken pony.

You're off to go into that broken pony land.

The second step is called the bad fish

because it's swimming in the wrong direction on the river.

But then another current comes along and you're going the other way

and you're a bad fishie and you're stuck in the current.

As long as you danced weird, you suited that dance.

Like mysterious.

# Praise you like I should... #

It's the sort of thing you can see yourself in your own front room,

I do, anyway, just leaping around and

doing all that and thinking you're burning off calories!

It really wasn't a hit at the discos, not at the time.

I don't think if you're going to be in some disco, taking your date out,

you would go into a broken pony or do the bad fish,

it's just not becoming, it's not, style-wise, romantic.

Number 43 in our dance crazes run-down comes from the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.

When I reach my 70s, I plan to spend my time eating toffees,

watching Homes Under The Hammer and pretending to be deaf.

When James Brown reached his 70s, he was still spending

his days wearing a jumpsuit and dancing around the stage like he was having some kind of fit.

His passing in 2006 was mourned not just by his fans, but by the entire prosthetic hip industry.

# Get up, get on up

# Get up, get on up

# Stay on the scene, get on up... #

(IMITATES INTRO) That iconic bit,

you hear that and you automatically know what time it is.

# Stay on the scene, get on up... #

Watching footage of James Brown is like watching someone possessed by

this amazing, musical, rhythmic, passionate dancing spirit.

I would describe James Brown as a firecracker.

He's up there, he can be smooth,

and you like that thing, and it just kind of goes crazy.

I love James Brown.

He was like one of those preacher dancers. He was like he was possessed by the Lord.

I definitely think James Brown has inspired many performers.

Michael Jackson, even Beyonce.

People want this thing, you know?

From his leg

to his spin to when he sings, when he dances, ow!

70-year-old James Brown - ow!

Still dancing. I'm like "James Brown, calm down.

"Calm down, James, because you might break a hip."

Absolutely the originator of shaking his thang!

Our next dance craze was spawned by Miley Cyrus's dad, of all people.

Turns out he's actually a musician,

and his 1992 track Achy Breaky Heart

brought line dancing into the big time.

The song was written by Don Von Tress, a man who, interestingly,

shares his initials with the medical condition deep vein thrombosis.

Yes, it's the dance sensation of the summer, the achy breaky!

Billy Ray Cyrus, for me, is the worst of what America can offer us.

He's got his mullet on the go.

It's sort of like a perm and mullet convention in the video. Horrendous.

But if you could master a grapevine and rock your hips three times,

you could do the achy breaky, and the routine was most infectious. Not infectious in a good way.

I mean infectious like conjunctivitis or scabies.

God, it was catchy.

You'd be in a club, and then people would start to hurriedly organise lines.

It's like, "No, stop it."

The shoulders are going, and all doing this sort of stuff.

That was the mother of all dance crazes, the whole line dancing thing.

Somebody called it the Cyrus virus, and now everywhere I play, people show up with

big posters and banners that say, "We've got the Cyrus virus."

Billy Ray Cyrus inflicted upon the world an appreciation of line dancing

-that, by rights, it should never have had.

-Thanks, Billy(!)

Hi, guys. You can't smell me, but I absolutely stink.

While I was lifting some really heavy weights, I looked around

and saw a lot of people in pain and very few people having fun.

And that's the way it should be when exercise is concerned.

But try telling that to these crazy geniuses who are in at number 41.

They won't listen.

I'm joking!

The speed and the slope of this treadmill can be varied

to simulate the physical demands while walking or ascending gradients.

# It could be ten but then again... #

I don't know anybody who didn't see that video

who watched the whole thing like this.

# Throw on your clothes The second side of Surfer Rosa

# And you leave me with my jaw on the floor... #

These are the gymtastic moves for OK Go's Here It Goes Again,

better known as "the treadmill song".

I think they did it in one take, which is pretty impressive.

It only works because it's done in one take.

These guys have to have rehearsed it so that you genuinely feel you're watching a spectacle.

Feel free to try this at home...once you've bought eight treadmills.

It's not really a dance you can do in a nightclub, like,

"Hello, mate, you come in the nightclub."

"Coat. Thank you very much."

"What's this?" "It's a treadmill."

"What are you doing with a treadmill?"

"I'm hoping you're going to play that song."

Just set up the treadmill.

# Just when you think you've got a hold

# Here it goes, here it goes Here it goes again... #

Though the song isn't amazing, but once you've seen the video,

you've got the video in your head and therefore, the song's brilliant.

# Here it goes again! #

Whether you know him as Ricky, Rick, Richard or just plain Dick,

chances are Ricky Martin is your

favourite grinning Puerto Rican narcissist.

Mine too, and this is his first English single, Livin' La Vida Loca,

a Spanish phrase which roughly translates as "your grandmother smells of donkeys".

I know, I was shocked and outraged too.

# Like a bullet to your brain, come on! #

# Upside, inside out, your grandmother smells of donkeys! #

# She'll push and pull you down

# Livin' la vida loca... #

Let's just forget the fact that he's gorgeous and can shake his bon-bon

like nobody else,

but he's got this captivating energy.

# Livin' la vida loca

# Livin' la vida loca... #

Ricky Martin has a great way

of working the camera, and he can do the smallest of dance moves

and it will be so effective.

When he's on stage, he has this fire.

It's just magnetic.

It gets everybody on their feet.

Ricky's Latin dance craze was Puerto Rico's biggest export since...well, ever. And no wonder.

As you're about to see, La Vida Loca is the perfect way to seduce a woman, or repair a dislocated hip.

Oh, yeah, we all love a bit of Latin, don't we?

Especially cos the men wear very tight trousers

and shake their bum a lot.

It's a bit of a loosey-goosey.

Shake. It was loosey.

The whole body shakes.

The butt shakes.

And the hands just flap around.

It just makes you want to leave your drink

and get up on the dance floor

and actually do something.

It's commercialised. It's dumbed down a bit.

It just makes it lighter, which is

the best thing to do for Ricky, because then everyone can join in, so everyone will like it.

Very clever, Ricky. Very clever.

At number 39, it's Don't Cha, or in English, "Don't you?"

Originally performed by the super-sexy Pussycat Dolls, it's more commonly performed now

by the drunkest girl in whatever club you happen to be in.

Some people say that it's a basically unpleasant song which objectifies women.

But I'm prepared to overlook this, because the girls in it have such nice bottoms.

Come on, girls!

# Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? #

Mmm. Don't Cha?

When it came out, people were like "Who do they think they are?"

"Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" They're hot.

A lot of people said "How arrogant is that?!"

"Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" But they were right.

# Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Ow, don't cha? #

This song's for all of our girls out there. Let me hear you scream!

The idea that Don't Cha

was for the sisters, which I think

is the nonsense that they came out with after people raised an eyebrow

about this woman-hating track...

If they want to call that feminism, then I'm more than happy to ignore them.

It was cheeky, you know what I mean?

It's not serious. It was all in fun.

The Pussycat Dolls were formed in 1995 as a burlesque dance troupe

performing at the Viper Room nightclub in LA.

Back in the day, we were straight burlesque.

People had always seen burlesque as a sort of striptease.

And although we say we were burlesque, we never stripped.

We stripped layers of corsets down to another corset, and down to another bra.

There were layers of things, but there was no nudity involved.

We have a Pussycat Doll leg, and sometimes they take it beyond.

HE WHIMPERS

But even if you can't get your legs behind your ears, you could enrol

in a class to learn how to flaunt your inner doll through dance.

I definitely think Pussycat Dolls helped bring back burlesque in a new-age millennium way.

It was a global phenomenon which we could never have anticipated.

I have got an inner doll directly in correspondence with how much gin I have.

And then inner doll comes out of me and does weird dance moves that aren't seen at any other time.

At number 38, S Club 7, a made-for-telly pop group created by pop mogul Simon Fuller.

Like some evil Frankenstein character, he formed a fully-functioning pop group

from the rotting body parts of seven decomposing pop singers.

And with this song, Reach, he struck gold and was laughing all the way to the bank, literally.

You should have seen him. Actually, it looked a bit weird.

Now, I've been watching your attempts at dancing,

and I must say, they are complete rubbish. What are they?

ALL: Complete rubbish.

We were playing ourselves. The TV show was about us

trying to make it, trying to be successful.

I beg your pardon?

It was one of the biggest kids' TV shows at the time.

You'd wake up in the morning and watch S Club, and they would always dance

and they would always entertain you and you'd have your favourite one

and want to copy their style.

Everybody wanted to know the moves.

If you were at a youth club and you didn't know the moves to an S Club tune, then who are you?

Dance routines are definitely important, because we don't have instruments to play.

So you kind of need something else, and we had some really fun and easy-to-pick-up dance routines.

# Don't stop, never give up

# Hold your head high and reach the top... #

The moves weren't hard, so anyone could do it.

Like the iconic S.

They did it in slow motion, slowed it down for you to do it with them.

# Reach for the stars... #

# Reach for the stars. Climb every mountain, yeah... #

# Reach for the stars... #

Everybody remembers this part.

Reach.

Reach!

I used to do it in the playground with all the bigger girls.

I got bullied anyway, so it didn't help.

But...

..dinner ladies loved me.

But even an S Club party has to come to an end at some point.

When their management brought out the S Club Juniors, the band must have known their time was up.

I auditioned for S Club Juniors. They were holding auditions everywhere

and they were like "You want to be in S Club Juniors! Come on down.

"You have to make a dance routine."

Me and my friends would all practise in the school yard.

When we got there, it didn't quite go to plan.

There was a lot of crying involved.

Dark place. Very dark place.

The original concept of S Club was to leave at 21, kind of like a Scouts movement.

# Don't stop movin' Can you feel the music? #

The Juniors came along, and they were really good.

Two of them are doing well. They're in the Saturdays.

Yes, there's a young Rochelle. And there's Frankie.

If it wasn't for the Juniors, you probably wouldn't have two sexy girls that are in the Saturdays right now.

# Let's get physical... #

At number 37 on our countdown of pop's greatest dance crazes,

it's a routine that took us back to the 1980s, with big hair, tiny leotards and woeful music.

It's Call On Me by Eric Prydz.

As well as being a great way to keep in shape,

it's also a lot of perfectly harmless, well-meaning fun.

I find it's best enjoyed with the sound on mute,

so you can hear the key in the front door.

The video for Call On Me is trying to recreate a scene

from the film, Perfect.

It's a pretty hot scene.

And Jamie Lee Curtis is instructing in an aerobics class,

and John Travolta's in there, getting pretty sweaty and watching her.

It wasn't until I got on set and they handed me my outfit, and it was a leotard.

I was like "Is there anything else to go with it?"

And they said "Oh, yeah, here's some leg warmers."

Brilliant.

They've got the neon colours on, they've got the leg warmers on the go.

They've got the really high-cut leotards.

There was some serious waxing in that video.

Those leotards were verging on indecent, I'd say.

I'd say decent.

I love that video.

Most guys do love that video.

That's what we want to see. Come on.

They weren't wearing clothes. That's great!

That's how I normally work out in the gym.

I just do that. Yeah.

That looks disgusting.

I think the move that stands out the most in Call On Me

is obviously the pelvic thrust.

So what you need to do for that, take the legs very wide, get down really low, and then just pelvic thrust!

There's what I like to call the peeing dog, which is this one,

where we do lots of leg-raises up here.

This one here, which is actually very good for the butt. Squeezing in.

I don't remember the dance routine so much as the bottom of the woman doing the dance routine.

If you want someone to look at your dance routine, then don't wear a G-string leotard.

Technically, Call On Me didn't spawn a dance craze, which is why I demanded it be disqualified.

But millions of men admired the "choreography"

online, and Tony Blair said it made him fall off his rowing machine, so I allowed it to be reinstated.

That bloke has clearly discovered the best gym in the world, and he's not letting on to his mates.

He can't believe his luck.

He gets his little running shorts on every week, gets in there and he's like "They're still all here!"

He enjoyed it, that's for sure, and I think there were a lot of men out there that were quite envious.

I'm surprised he didn't have to have sturdier shorts in the situation he was in.

I think it made a lot of 14-year-old boys extremely happy.

I was 15. I had a tape, and I recorded it on it.

And so my mum wouldn't know, I put that it had The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air on it.

-Oh, dear.

-Ooh!

Gently! Gently! Slow.

OK, right.

Hi, guys. As you can see, I've been skateboarding my whole life.

So it'll come as no surprise to you...

that I'm actually an expert in the next dance craze, breakdancing.

I'd perform a bit for you now, but it'd probably blow your minds, so the BBC has asked me not to.

Here's our number 36, Jason Nevins vs Run DMC, It's Like That.

And it goes a little something like this.

I've always wanted to be able to breakdance,

cos I grew up in the '80s and there were loads of kids

with lino, and going out with their ghetto blasters and everything.

Run DMC, that video was so cool.

-Everyone in it was amazing at breaking and dancing. It was all very...

-Yeah.

..in your face.

When that song came out, it was like "Whoa, there are some serious moves

"that we are not knowing about that we need to know about."

In 1998, New York DJ Jason Nevins remixed this vintage Run DMC tune.

It's Like That was huge.

Number one in over 30 countries, with almost 5 million copies sold.

The video showed b-boys battling b-girls, and introduced

a new generation to the dance-off and classic '80s breaking moves.

A breakdance battle was all about two crews battling each other with moves to see who's got

supremacy within style and moves, so you've got different aspects.

You've got power, which is the head-spins, the flares and all that stuff.

You've got style, which is more the top-rocking.

And you've got footwork itself. So it's Kool And The Gang.

When they're battling, a lot of it's freestyle.

So it's all off the top of your head, just going with the song.

So everything you're doing is just like...

OK, we're going to take it down and do some b-boy styles. Let's go.

That's my boy.

For me, it was all about that dude with the crazy, curly hair.

It was just such a weird style.

His top-rocking was just, like, shaking his head.

There was someone in it that looked like me,

had hair like me.

He did have my hair. I think I told a few people I was in that video. It was a lie.

How would that even work?!

Breakdancing is perhaps the least accessible dance craze

on this countdown. Only people like me with real skills can pull off these moves.

But there are many who have tried and bear the scars to this day.

When Run DMC comes on, I think a lot of men think they can breakdance, and they will give it a go.

We've had people try to do the caterpillar and open their chin up, so there's just claret everywhere.

It's hilarious, because when that song comes on, a circle immediately develops, and nobody knows why.

It's just a thing that happens.

And for the first two minutes, no-one gets in the middle. Everyone's like...

"You do it, you do it!"

You'll get five or six drunken men that can't breakdance.

I used to just do a roly-poly.

But as soon as you did a roly-poly, as long as you looked confident, I'd do a roly-poly and go...

and people would cheer.

When pop stars have children, they dream of making music for grown-ups.

But when pop stars are grown-ups, it seems they dream of making music

for children, which explains why they give themselves baby names

like Dappy and Biffy and Gaga.

The dance craze at number 35 in our chart is definitely one for the under-fives.

It's the Kings In Da Ghetto, proving that the UK urban music

scene isn't too cool to embrace a primary school jig, with their take on Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes.

Personally, I prefer The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round by the Wu-Tang Clan.

A brand new dance is sweeping the nation.

Ladies, let me see you go down low.

If someone said to you "They've put Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes into a song", you'd probably go "Really?"

# Head and shoulders, knees and toes knees and toes... #

But until you actually hear it and the fact that it's on a grime tune, it's cool.

# Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes... #

But our one is better.

These enterprising lads made their very own video that they posted online,

and their amateur efforts became a surprise hit.

I made the video.

-Well, we all made the video, but I mean that...

-He was the cameraman.

I was the main guy, walking round and asking anybody "Can you do Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes, please?"

You're just seeing normal people on the road doing Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes.

And the whole point it is to embarrass yourself.

-The more you embarrass yourself, the better it looks.

-It's not very hard to know that dance, is it?

Head, shoulders, knees... but they did it in a cool way.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

When that first dropped

on 1Xtra, I couldn't quite believe my ears

and I was like, "Is it that simple?

"We've literally got to do Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes?" Amazing.

We've all got our own versions, like he does it in a specific, like...

-The bestest.

-Basically he's the Mr Motivator of Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes.

Minus the spandex.

-He does it the most stiff.

-He's the stiff one!

And then I do it for the basics, for the people that just can't get down to their toes.

# Let me see you go down low... #

He keeps going "Ladies, let me see you get down low,

"ladies, let me see you get down low"

and you think, "They can't get any lower."

It doesn't matter if you're at the bar, sitting down,

you're going to come to the dance floor and everyone does it.

It looks wicked when you see like 3,000 people all doing the dance at the same time.

I went to Ayia Napa last year and Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes was the one, literally

when you see everyone do it in unison, you forget that it was ever a ridiculous kiddie tune.

-# Ladies, you gotta wind down low. #

-That was the news.

Good night.

At number 34, it's Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake.

Of course, some people call him Justin Trousersnake

because of his penchant for storing a cobra in his pants.

# Dance with me I wanna rock your body... #

It was only in 2007, when the cobra laid its eggs resulting

in over 400 horrific bites, that Justin was persuaded to release the snakes back into the wild.

# Got time, but I don't mind

# Just want to rock you, girl... #

White boys aren't supposed to be able to dance like that.

Hello! He was amazing.

I think Justin Timberlake is one of the best dancers around.

He's got that whole kind of mmm vibe, like the crotch, mmm, yeyah.

If you look at what Justin Timberlake did in Rock Your Body, it's the minimal movements,

but executed right on the money.

# Don't be so quick to walk away... #

Justin Timberlake, I think,

was completely influenced by Michael Jackson, but he does it in his own way which is really cool and sexy.

It is sexy. It is sexy.

You can see he's been influenced by Michael Jackson, you can feel that,

but he was just...

There was a freedom, he was really cool.

What it is about Justin Timberlake's dance is his swagger.

He's very effortless.

He uses his clothes a lot, you can tell he feels very sexy about himself.

He is sexy, he is sexy.

I loved that. I fell in love with that video. I was like,

"Mmm, maybe I want to get back in the dance studio."

# Just something about you. #

And it wasn't just Bradley who was inspired to dance like him.

Justin's debut solo album, Justified,

sold seven million copies and critics called him the sexiest man in music.

Sexier even than the stunning Mick Hucknall.

# I kind of noticed something one night

# In your colourful face... #

Most boys wanted to dance like Justin and if they said they didn't,

they did secretly and all girls wanted to bed him openly, end of story, full stop, exclamation mark.

# Ain't nobody love you like I love you... #

He's a little bit of a flirt and I think the girls like that,

you know, and he plays off of it and that's in his music.

It takes the stigma away from guys dancing, doesn't it?

They need to learn some moves to impress the ladies.

Justin Timberlake brought about for the ordinary bloke a huge, big problem.

I think women wanted their blokes to dance like him

and that, of course, takes an enormous amount of ability

and talent because he's a complete natural.

Although it didn't stop a lot of guys trying, that's for sure!

# Sing this song with me... #

When it comes on in a club, everyone thinks that they can dance so everyone's like "Justin Timberlake!"

It gets all serious and everyone puts their dance face on.

As long as you dance sexy, I think you've done the Justin Timberlake.

It's easy to forget that national sweetheart, Cheryl Cole was once

convicted of assault after thwacking a loo attendant in the face.

But not that easy, not when Cheryl herself insists on reminding us

of her rampant thumpiness with angry songs like Fight For This Love.

This song has a dance routine that Bruce Lee would've been proud of, featuring as it does

Cheryl thrashing around with her fists as if in a futile attempt to deck her wardrobe assistant.

# Too much of anything can make you sick

# Even the good can be a curse curse... #

Fight For This Love - great track. It had a lot

of meaning behind it if you looked at all of the tabloid fodder.

For her, as a woman, she's just saying, you can go through so many

ups and downs in a relationship,

but if it's right, you'll fight till the end, basically.

# Anything that's worth having

# Is sure enough worth fighting for... #

Whilst our Chezza's fight for her love with her hubby, Ashley, would eventually end in the divorce court,

her debut solo single was a global smash.

There were a few iconic moves in there, the whole hand-wafting move

and some old moves like this.

It was a great routine.

# Fight for this love

# If it's worth having it's worth fighting for... #

The three key moves

are the Cheryl chop

which is all this business.

The shoulder pop.

Which doesn't look impressive unless you've got other people doing it behind you.

And the drop and roll.

Which is...

seemingly quite important, get the knees up.

# Anything that's worth having... #

You are now officially fighting for this love.

# We gotta fight... #

The video was as much about Cheryl's look as the moves,

not ideal if you happen to listen to the song on the radio.

Her look was all about those leather trousers.

Red military with spray-on legs, you know.

She alternated between being in the army and wearing her pyjamas, didn't she?

She had MC Hammer pyjamas on for some of it and then in other bits

she looked like a majorette who'd spent half the day waist-deep in a pond, didn't she?

But however fabulous, she was about to be outdone by, of all people, Rufus Hound.

-For Sport Relief, performing - and I'm not making this up...

-You couldn't.

..Cheryl Cole's Fight For This Love, it's Rufus Hound.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The whole of Fight For This Love is about jerky movements

and moving your body in a way that, naturally, nobody's body moves.

By the time I was actually on stage doing it, I was just rattling

with ibuprofen, I'd had to go to an osteopath, my whole spine and legs are not used to moving in the way

that they're forced to move.

# Anything that's worth having

# Is sure enough worth fighting for... #

By the time I was doing it, she was in the papers with her and Ashley calling it a day.

I didn't want "Here's you going through a divorce and ha, ha, ha,

"here's me laughing at your greatest achievement, boo you!"

So when I met her and she said it really cheered her up,

that was a very nice feather in the cap.

# If it's worth having it's worth fighting for... #

Although she did talk to me like I'd won the X Factor.

It wasn't like "Hey, we both work in the entertainment business, I enjoyed the dance, well played."

She just went, "I thought you did very well, I think you've really showed there what you could do."

That would make such a great recruitment video for the Salvation Army.

# Ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen... #

And number 32

in our top 50 countdown of pop's greatest dance crazes,

we have Ciara and Missy Elliott with a song called One, Two, Step.

# This beat is... #

Which doubles as an educational song for children unable to count to two

and a motivational mantra for people frightened of walking up stairs.

Ciara is just totally hot and can dance her head off.

Now, that, I'd like to see.

Ciara's One, Two, Step dance is a very old-school dance that was done

back in the day of disco and she took it and revamped it.

# You got to get it on Let me see you one, two, step... #

One, Two, Step, it tells you exactly what to do,

Ciara was quite a new artist at the time, everyone was like, "Wow, this girl can move it!"

She seems to be able to bend all sorts of ways, doesn't she, Ciara?

She's unbreakable, that one.

Ciara can do from sexy to really hardcore ghetto South Central choreography.

I remember in the nightclub whenever that song came on,

more people would do the stumbling legs...

..than the one, two, step.

Those wobbly legs, that's called the Crip Walk.

In America, they have the Bloods and the Crips.

They were big gangs, and the Crips as a gang sign, they would do this dance, it's a Crip Walk.

It's hard to do, but you would catch me

in the clubs doing that and doing the little one, two, step.

# Crank back three times from left to right... #

# Soulja Boy off in it... #

At number 31 in Pop's Greatest Dance Crazes,

it's Soulja Boy who is A, not a soldier and B, no longer a boy.

But what he lacks in basic honesty, he more than makes up for in sweet, sweet moves.

# Soulja Boy, off in it... #

That was the twist of the 2000s.

It's probably the biggest dance craze of my era, actually, of my generation.

The first time I heard it, I was like, "OK, now I need to learn this dance." I was on YouTube trying

to learn it before anyone else and do it all just as good Soulja Boy did.

This dance for Soulja Boy's 2007 hit Crank That might look good, but it's not appropriate in cramped spaces.

Try doing this in the middle of a crowded dance floor and someone will lamp you, and quite right too.

Soulja Boy, don't bang into people, yeah? So it goes...

I think you've got to jump side to side.

Everyone feels silly doing it, do it like you don't care.

It gets a bit crazy, that one as well because people, they decide

it's all about who travels the furthest on the whoo...

so everyone is hopping... about ten metres on the whoo.

Whoo!

# He wind me, whoo... #

# Superman that! #

Cos I mean, come on, how cool is that?

If it sounds like it was

written using a Casio toy keyboard, that's because it was, kind of.

The DIY track was made in his dad's recording studio and released on the internet

with a video demonstrating the now-famous dance.

When I heard the song, I was like, "Really?" It sounded like one of those bad demos.

These days, you can go and make your own music, it's as simple as that,

I know 13-year-olds that actually make their own music.

He produced it, wrote it, made his own dance,

got all the money!

-The song wasn't all that.

-It's true.

# Soulja Boy... # Actually it is really good.

-It's brilliant, I love that song.

-I do like it.

Soulja Boy holds the record as the youngest person to write, perform and produce a US number-one hit.

But when we found out what young Soulja Boy

was actually rapping about, we were less keen on kids doing his dance.

That's a really dirty one, isn't it?

I think it's meant to be...

What he's saying is quite rude, but we won't go into that.

Because it's very vulgar.

So it's, "Oi, what you doing, stop singing that song. Soulja Boy, you should be ashamed of yourself."

So that's your lot.

If, like me, you spent the whole show dancing along

to each and every song, then like me,

you probably stink. Take a shower.

Seriously, have a shower now.

Goodbye!

# Move it! I like to move it move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# You like to...move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# You like to...move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it You like to...move it. #

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