Whigfield and Beyonce 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 a chance to do something all together

and all feel like we are 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 your thing. You know what I'm saying.

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

The moment any of these songs start, you're damned if you do when 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 be

reminding you over the next half an 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.

Do be do be do noo. Whatever she said.

Dee de da la da da.

Noo me noo me na na.

Dee dee na na na. Dee dee na na na.

-I

-never had rollers in on a Saturday night.

Heated rollers went out in the '70s.

# Saturday night, I feel the air is getting hot... #

Saturday Night topped the charts for four weeks in 1994, and got a whole generation up and dancing.

For me, it was the first dance craze

that was of my generation, being in a pub, it coming on

and it feeling important

that you did know the moves, that you weren't being left out.

# Da ba da dan dee dee dee da nee na na na

# Be my baby... #

It's just easy and it's fun, and it's drunk proof, isn't it?

# Pretty baby... #

The moves didn't originate in a dance studio, but on a Spanish beach.

The aerobics instructor responsible has never stepped up to take credit,

or maybe the blame, whichever way you look at it!

Every time he'd do his classes on the beach, he'd play this track

and do this dance to this song.

Then people went to clubs at night and heard the song, and it just moved around.

# Saturday night I feel the air is getting hot

# Like you, baby... #

The record labels around, they didn't believe in the song, they didn't like it very much.

It was actually a song that was built up by the audience.

By the public.

# Viva Espana. #

People just went on holiday in Spain and in Portugal and came back and requested the song.

We go on holiday, two weeks out of the year,

Costa Brava, Costa del Sol and we crave

quite a rubbish song with a bit of a silly dance routine.

What's that about?

When you go there, it's contagious.

You come back and you're like, "Guys..."

I bet Whigfield loved doing that dance.

I just saw people doing these moves, but it's not like, "Oh, I want to learn it too."

Because it's not, "I'm going on stage, I've got to do the dance."

I said, "I'll never do the dance,"

-I don't want people to think it's something that we did, you know?

-Oh.

-Stop it, will you, hey?

-He's just a bit, how do you say it in Danish?

-Thick?

-Yeah, thick, that's the word.

You know, it's a rite of passage, is just one of those things when you get a bit older,

it's on the list of things that are valid to look back and hate about yourself.

17 years on, Whigfield is still making music, but a different kind of music - the kind you never hear.

I used to be quite sick of this song.

I think maybe after one, two, three years, I was fed up, I couldn't hear it.

And now, it's part of me, you know?

# Saturday night... #

It's under my skin.

Better get some ointment for that!

It's 1978 and the world has gone disco crazy.

Saturday Night Fever is in the cinemas and dance floors are

full of hairy-chested men dancing like absolute idiots.

Every man jack of them is trying to copy the sexy moves of Mr John Travolta.

We just think of him now as a crazy Scientologist who makes often bad films, but in the 1970s,

he was responsible for the dance craze that makes it to number five on our list.

It's Night Fever, take it away, John.

I think if you put Saturday Night Fever on, everyone

starts to do the John Travolta, and you can't get away from that.

# Night fever, night fever... #

When you think about Saturday Night Fever, you think of the disco and the lights

and the white suit and the moves, and people living for the weekend.

Saturday Night Fever is a gritty portrayal of alcohol abuse and rape,

but what people really remember is John Travolta doing this.

It was the first time a normal person, who did a nine-to-five job,

went to a disco

on a Saturday night and became the star of that disco,

the king of that disco.

# Night fever, night fever... #

Travolta really could bust some moves,

but it took him five months' dance training to get ready for the role.

It's kind of a squiggly move, and very weird, because you can roll the arms this way and this way.

I met Travolta. Of course, John came walking in, strutting, you know.

I said, "Can I see how you dance?" He goes, "I already know how to dance."

I said, "Sit down," and I started doing the splits and all the points.

He said, "That's it, that's what I want to learn."

John particularly liked this step here, where he was stepping back.

It was a step he could work with,

and he'd do this, and turn like this, and he'd roll his hips and

point out the women.

Everybody knew that. It's like the roll...

Down, up, down, up.

Saturday Night Fever was a shock for the audience,

when they saw guys giving it large. Amazing.

The Bee Gees sold more than 15 million copies of their soundtrack,

people lined up to learn the dance moves and DJs playing vinyl records replaced live bands.

Disco, as we know it, was born.

The whole nation in the '70s was doing Saturday Night Fever,

everyone wanted to be John Travolta.

A very popular one is called the roly-poly.

Get your John Travolta thumb, roll the hands and mark the rhythm at the same time.

And one, and two, one, and two.

So many guys took dance lessons and all this stuff, just to be noticed.

Dance clubs all over the world, and dance studios, were just jam-packed with people you'd never expect.

People with two left feet, two right feet.

Everyone wanted to dance. Like me at the family weddings...

Before, I was just a solo boy on the floor.

Soon as John Travolta started, that was it. Didn't have room for an elbow.

It would start with one person, then someone else would join in,

then someone else would join in, till the whole room is going mad, doing the same dance.

It was mad, I loved that time.

Never, ever, did I think it would become mainstream.

And now it's found its place in history.

You can go into clubs now and see a lot of sampling done

of disco music, and they'll play straight disco, they'll play retro.

So it's found its place in history as great dance music.

# My woman keeps me warm... #

Madonna is such an icon of pop music,

it's sometimes hard to believe that she's now 83 years of age.

In 1990, when Vogue was released, she was a mere slip of a gal

in her early 60s, long before her arthritis started giving her all that gip.

Back then, she was one heck of a dancer.

When I first saw Madonna's Vogue, those moves were just amazing.

Everybody was doing that dance in the clubs, including moi.

Strike a pose.

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

# Vogue... #

When Vogue came out, that was enormous, darling.

Everyone wanted to Vogue and it is, I have to say, one of the most technically difficult things to do.

# Come on, Vogue

# Let your body move to the music Hey, hey, hey... #

Vogue comes from the actual magazine, Vogue,

and portraying the images that you'd see in that magazine.

# Come on, Vogue... #

It's dance put into modelling shapes.

You know, it'll be that, it'll be that, it'll be that.

# All you need is your own imagination... #

It's really about the attitude.

Every movement should be photogenic.

# It makes no difference if you're black or white

# If you're a boy or a girl... #

Then you do your poses, poses.

# If the music's pumping It'll give you new life.

Have you ever tried to dance with someone who's Voguing?

It's like a barrier. "Get away from me, I'm Voguing."

It's so elitist, isn't it?

"I'm not trying to dance.

"I'm just going to do it." That's Vogue.

Vogue was Madonna's seventh UK number one and if you've

ever struck a pose a la Madge, you might be surprised to learn that

she pinched the dance from the New York gay scene that was strutting its stuff around Harlem in the '80s.

Everyone thinks Madonna invented it, and of course, she didn't.

It was happening in underground clubs all around New York.

I first saw Vogue in New York in the mid-'80s. I was amazed.

It was such a visual impact, seeing all these confident,

flamboyant children, working the disco dance floor threadbare.

Ghetto queens wanted to run competitions,

and what they would have are houses, and each week they would compete against different boroughs.

When you're competing with somebody, it's like...

"I'm so much better than you."

It's possibly one of the gayest dances ever, in the world.

Madonna's very good at picking up whatever's current or happening underground

at that moment, and making it more mainstream.

-She has the power to popularise it.

-# Let your body... #

Even though it was, at that time, considered a dance craze

for the masses, to us, it's not a dance craze, it's a way of life.

# Vogue, Vogue, Vogue, Vogue. #

I love Single Ladies.

I mean, the song, Single Ladies, not ladies who are single. I can't be doing with them.

At number three on our list, it's Beyonce, who's most certainly not a single lady.

I get that, now, Beyonce, I'm fine with it, and I'm sorry about the e-mails...

# All the single ladies All the single ladies

# All the single ladies All the single ladies

# All the single ladies All the single ladies

# All the single ladies, Now put your hands up... #

The Single Ladies message is saying to a man who isn't prepared

to ask you to marry him, that you'll just go out and find someone else.

Which...

is a little bit 19th century.

# He up on me Don't pay him any attention... #

Single Ladies is basically that girl song for the clubs,

to talk junk to the guys.

It says, "Hey, you know, too late, you know, he looking at it now,

"you can't get me."

# Don't be mad once you seen That he want it... #

The first time I watched Single Ladies, I said to myself,

"Self, you need to learn this dance, because it's going to be big."

# Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh... #

You had to know it from the beginning to the end, everything. All this bit, all this bit.

# If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it... #

Single Ladies is such an intricate routine but it still has a sense of being approachable.

You can take it and you can make it your own.

Beyonce's Single Ladies video, I really like, because she's all woman in that video.

# If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it... #

The iconic look of Single Ladies is definitely the ring dance,

and people played with it. # Uh oh oh uh... # ta ta, click, hey.

You're at a party and they put on Single Ladies, the first thing people start doing is the hand.

# If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it... #

I think my favourite was... I call it the choo-choo train.

You can go around with it...

a tee tee ta.

It still had Beyonce's style and flavour and bounce and it was really quite original.

Beyonce's video may look fresh but nothing is 100% original,

and the Single Ladies dance routine is no exception.

It was influenced by the moves of legendary Broadway choreographer Bob Fosse.

Single Ladies was inspired by Bob Fosse and I don't think a lot of people know that.

Fosse himself was a master of minimal movement, and making minimal movement extraordinary.

And that's exactly what they did.

They made it small, they contained it and they made it iconic.

Going into Single Ladies, we knew Beyonce had this Bob Fosse reference

and we knew that she wanted to create something iconic and fun and just funky.

I think that's why people can relate to it so easily.

# Like a ghost, I'll be gone All the single ladies... #

Beyonce's look was simple but striking, in her asymmetrical

leotard, metallic glove, and of course, her high heels.

The beautiful thing about that video was actually to get girls back in heels, dancing.

Beyonce doesn't have little heels, she has heels.

No pain, no gain, that's what I say.

But it's worth it if you end up looking like Ms Knowles.

Hers was a dance craze that inspired thousands of imitations,

including Katy Brand in Let's Dance For Sport Relief.

The Single Ladies dance is really difficult.

The steps don't follow a regular pattern of beats. I only refer to them as the punchy bit,

the fally down bit, the hurty bit. I don't think...

I'm not sure Beyonce referred to things like the hurty bit, or the groin strain bit.

# ..then you should have put a ring on it... #

People do copy moves from Single Ladies, and

I've been at the concert and I watch them do the entire routine.

I'm like...

"Are you really going to do that full routine?

"It's a long one and it's hard."

If anyone's got about 47 consecutive hours that they can donate directly

to learning to dance, then anyone can do the Single Ladies dance.

# If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it Uh oh oh. #

In second place, it's the Village People and Y-M-C-A.

In this good natured and uplifting anthem, well built and highly sexed gay men sing...

Hang on, who says they're highly sexed?

And how do we know they're gay?

They might be gay.

Which is brilliant, I wish I was gay. Sometimes...

Mainly when I watch this!

Being gay looks amazing!

# Young man... #

Y-M-C-A

is about spelling the letters of the alphabet, Y, M, C and A.

# Y-M-C-A! It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A... #

It's Y, M, C...

It's Y, M, C, A?

The routine was created to encourage audience participation when the Village People performed

on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in January 1979.

Dick Clark surprised us by announcing

that the dances on the show

were going to show us a new dance step.

# Y-M-C-A! #

They introduced the arm movements.

So, we liked it,

we took it.

Right?

# Y-M-C-A... #

Y, M, C, A.

HE MOUTHS

Y-M-C-A was really cool.

I don't think it's cool now but it was cool at the time.

It really brought people together.

It was quite sensational, actually.

#Y-M-C-A

The band was the brainchild of a French disco producer

who brought to public attention some of the colourful characters

that lived in New York's Greenwich Village.

This is Greenwich Village, centred in and around Christopher Street,

on the west side of this traditionally bohemian district of Manhattan,

is a vast community of gay men.

We presented to America

six young guys, good-looking,

each one of them was one of the stereotype

of the American male.

It was like a comic strip or a bunch of superheroes to me.

You have your policeman, your leather man, your cowboy and your construction worker.

Everyone loves a bit of dress-up, don't they?

# It's fun to stay at the... #

I think the macho stereotypes are all the people that gay guys want to get off with, to be honest.

You know, it's all the gay, iconic, porno stars, I suppose.

I do remember thinking, "Oh, I quite like that."

You know, I'd wear that. I knew that my dad wouldn't really wear something like that.

I did think, "Maybe they're a bit more like me."

# Together, we will go our way.. #

Their unique look caught the public's imagination

and back in the late '70s, when the gay community was still fighting to be out and proud,

the Village People danced straight to the top of the charts and into the mainstream.

If it was perceived as one of the first gay bands, good, I'm happy about it.

# Tell our friends goodbye... #

There was a huge moment, I think, in liberation, wasn't it, really.

It did wave a sort of rainbow flag.

# Go west! Life is peaceful there... #

It got the message out there that it's all right to be out and proud.

It was a gay anthem and the family audience loved it, too.

But they had no idea it was about cruising for male company at a youth hostel.

Everyone knew Y-M-C-A, didn't they? Your dad and your uncle and the whole football team.

# Y-M-C-A... #

The melody and the dance just made it very

family friendly and you didn't really listen to the words.

You didn't really look at it as being gay because it was so overt.

So you thought, "No, it can't be."

It confused me in the '70s.

I thought, "Hold on, my uncle was a Y-M-C-A-er"

and then my dad started and then I was like, "Whoa! This is all wrong."

I don't think about the double entendre that there is in the lyrics.

I think only of the fact that someone is getting fun in doing the Y-M-C-A, that's all.

The original line-up may have changed a little but the Village People is still packing them in

on the gay nostalgia circuit and three decades on, hapless punters are still getting the moves wrong.

You've got to do a Y,

a great big Y. It's easy enough

but apparently it gets harder when we get to M, which is M -

not the monkey thing.

Is it possible to get Y, M, C, A wrong.

Not the Joan Crawford thing.

-Y, M, C, A.

-Then we say C and they all do it the wrong way.

-Is it that way, or that way.

-Did I just get it different. Like, maybe.

What do I do?

Then the A.

But you look out there...

And you see all kinds of variety.

So if you've been made to look an idiot when attempting the Y-M-C-A, you know who to blame.

Sorry, y'all.

A bit late for apologies.

# Body moving, body moving, body moving

# We be body moving Body moving, body moving... #

Well, we've almost reached our dance craze destination.

We've danced ourselves dizzy

and now it's time to find out what is pop's greatest dance craze.

So, it's over to me again.

# Body moving, keep your body moving

# Body moving, we be body moving... #

And so we arrive at the top of the list.

And the dance craze that is the craziest craze of all the crazes.

Which could it be?

It's Thriller by Michael Jackson.

A man who sums up the twin themes of dance and crazy more than any popstar who ever lived.

In this video he plays a zombie with eerie accuracy.

Clearly, his odyssey into the depths of plastic surgery gave him

a better understanding than most of how a zombie feels facially.

The results, as you are about to see, are quite spectacular.

I have something I want to tell you.

Yes, Michael?

I'm not like other guys.

Of course not, that's why I love you.

No, I mean, I'm different.

In the beginning Michael's telling me that I'm not

like everyone else and I'm like, I know you're not.

He's like, no, I'm really not like anybody else.

Michael called me and basically

he'd seen American Werewolf In London

and wanted to turn into a monster.

Are you all right?

Go away.

Aaargh!

It is quite an amazing transformation he does.

The thing I used to really flinch at is when the claws come through the ends of his fingers.

There's that noise, isn't there? Krrr.

Released on December 2nd 1983 Thriller was a horror movie in a 13-minute music video.

An epic with the biggest and best dance number we'd ever seen.

Critics called it the greatest music video ever made and now we crown it Pop's Greatest Dance Craze.

# Cos this is thriller, thriller night... #

It was groundbreaking, you know, the video was incredible. The routine was brilliant.

-Everybody knows a bit of Thriller.

-# Thriller night... #

It was amazing, absolutely amazing. When you say Thriller now, my shoulders are going.

They're like zombies but they can dance.

I've never seen zombies that can dance.

They were cool dancing zombies.

That took my breath away because it was so intricate and so unique

and just these dancers the way they executed it was just amazing.

Michael Jackson was a hot zombie.

You wouldn't care if his arm fell off. You would just, "Ooh, take me now."

It was cool because there were all kinds of moves in that scene You know, the iconic stuff.

There's no moves that you've ever seen that have been done again.

You have this move that goes chung, chung.

It's like everyone can do that.

Just lift your arms up, grab an apple and there you have it.

You've also got the one where he goes... The zombie.

I said I demand that the dancers have two weeks' rehearsal.

Rehearsal in a rock video is unheard of.

You know, they learn it the day before.

I said it's not quick cut, I want to do it like a dance number. Michael is a brilliant performer.

# Cos this is Thriller! #

The video cost £800,000, an amount unheard of for a pop promo at the time.

The production had the kind of costumes and make-up that you'd expect in a Hollywood feature film.

Each individual dancer was in the make-up chair,

for, I would say, three to four hours apiece.

By the time you were finished, you looked in the mirror and it was really frightening.

You had this hideous premonition of possibly what you'll look like

after you've been in the ground for a period of time.

I'm going to show you my Thriller teeth, OK?

This is the bottom set.

This is the top set.

As you can see, just that alone, all of a sudden makes you somebody that you're not.

In 2007, Philippine prisoners became synonymous with the Thriller dance

after a video of 1,500 inmates went viral with 46 million recorded hit.

Thriller worked absolutely everywhere.

Look at the inmates in the Filipino jail. How fantastic is that?

You can take our freedom but you'll never take the dance away from us.

The theories of Michael Jackson are rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

and if you're doing 25 in jail, you've got time to

rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Ever since the '80s Michael's fan have wanted to be part

of the Thriller experience by learning the routine.

I bought a magazine and on each page had a perforated thing of a foot.

Once you'd cut out these feet it had various diagrams where you could lay them out

to show you how to do Michael Jackson's most iconic dances.

That is like an Amish version of a dance mat, isn't it?

The late king of pop may be infamous for many reasons but tonight we pay homage and remember him

for his unparalleled ability to light up a dance floor and get us up and busting some moves.

-Thanks, Jacko.

-The whole world watched the dance.

I remember watching it with my parents and to think everybody sat there and watched that

and then the next day everyone's trying to get the dance.

Everyone had done Thriller at some point.

To be part of the Thriller dance was the greatest highlight of my career.

EVIL LAUGHTER

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!

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