Twerking

"Twerk" redirects here. For other uses, see Twerk (disambiguation).

A woman twerking at a music festival.
A woman twerking at a music festival

Twerking (/ˈtwɜːrkɪŋ/; possibly from 'to work') is a type of dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving throwing or thrusting the hips back or shaking the buttocks, often in a low squatting stance.[1] It is individually performed chiefly but not exclusively by women.[2][3]

Twerking is part of a larger set of characteristic moves unique to the New Orleans style of hip-hop known as "bounce".[4] Moves include "mixing", "exercising", the "bend over", the "shoulder hustle", "clapping", "booty clapping", "booty poppin", "the sleeper" and "the wild wood"—all recognized as booty shaking or bounce.[5][6] Twerking is one among other types of choreographic gestures within bounce.

Twerking emerged from the bounce music scene of New Orleans in 1990.[7] It has a broader origin among other types of dancing found among the African diaspora that derives from Bantu-speaking Africans of Central Africa.[8]

As a tradition shaped by local aid and pleasure clubs, block parties and second lines,[9] the dance was central to "a historical situating of sissy bounce—bounce music as performed by artists from the New Orleans African-American community that [led to] a meteoric rise in popularity post-[Hurricane Katrina after 2005]."[10] In the 1990s, twerking had widespread appeal in black party culture throughout the hip-hop/rap region known as The Dirty South, including New Orleans, Houston, Memphis, Virginia Beach, Miami, Atlanta, and Houston.[9][10] In 2013, it became the top "what is" search on the Google search engine[11] following pop artist Miley Cyrus performing the dance at the MTV Video Music Awards.[12]

(video) Backup dancers twerking at a 2015 Pharrell Williams concert in Japan
  1. ^ "Twerk: Definition of Twerk in Oxford Dictionary - American English (US)". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on August 8, 2016. Retrieved December 11, 2013.
  2. ^ Miller, Matt (2012). Bounce: Rap Music and Local Identity in New Orleans. Boston: Univ of Massachusetts Press.
  3. ^ Dee, Jonathan (August 11, 2012). "Sissy Bounce, New Orleans's Gender-Bending Rap - NYTimes.com". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 11, 2012. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  4. ^ "Where They At: New Orleans Hip-Hop and Bounce in Words and Pictures. Aubrey Edwards and Alison Fensterstock. New Orleans 2010". www.wheretheyatnola.com. Archived from the original on June 12, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  5. ^ "Peter Pan and Bending Over: Big Freedia's 5 Best Non-Twerk Dances". Fuse. Archived from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  6. ^ Fuse (October 9, 2013), Big Freedia on New Orleans Bounce Music & Inventing New Dance Moves, archived from the original on May 14, 2014, retrieved June 30, 2017
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Vendetti was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Pérez was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ a b Holly, Hobbs (2012). "A Review of Matt Miller's Bounce: Rap Music and Local Identity in New Orleans". Southern Spaces. 2012. doi:10.18737/M7ZC82. Archived from the original on August 15, 2017. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  10. ^ a b Matt, Miller (2008). "Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the US South, 1997–2007". Southern Spaces. 2008. doi:10.18737/M78P5T. Archived from the original on July 5, 2017. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  11. ^ Hern, Alex (December 17, 2013). "Twerking dances its way into 2013 Google search rankings". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on August 15, 2017. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cyrus was invoked but never defined (see the help page).