Wah-Watusi!

Booklet of dance instructions, early 1960s.

Lately it's been hard to get my mind and body in gear.  Perhaps it's just hibernation time.  There's nothing wrong beyond the usual creaks and rumbles of old age.  Guess I'm just in a blah mood.

The state of the world being what it is, I've tried today to think of something I could blog that might give me a lift - maybe it will help somebody else, too.  So here goes.

I'm sure many of my truckbuddies remember the Watusi song and the dance of the same name - or do you?  Alas, by the time I started going to high-school dances, say about 1968 or so, all the cutely named dances popular in the early sixties had degenerated into miscellaneous twitches, jerks, and shuffles.  There were no steps to learn - you just stood there and wiggled as you pleased, more or less in time with the music.  A couple of years later, the Cool Kids in their puritan zeal declared that dancing was "not relevant" - and so there were no more dances, in high school or college.  They didn't return until the rise of disco, about 1976.

But I digress.  Just what was the Watusi?  I've tried to look this up before, and apparently nobody really knows.  I've seen comments from dance teachers on YouTube who say they can't find any actual steps to that dance.  Well, here are some historical videos that might give a clue.  See what you think - and I think you will smile.

1.  The lovely Lennon Sisters on the Lawrence Welk Show:

 

2. Wednesday and Lurch from The Addams Family:

3.  The KCTU Dancers from Wichita, Kansas, in 2014, having big fun with something that may or may not be historically correct:

4.  Luci Johnson and Steve McQueen certainly ought to have known what they were doing in Beverly Hills in the summer of '64, so perhaps this is the definitive performance:

5.  On the other hand, how can you get more authentic than these chaps?  From the 1959 film Watusi, I think:

Vote for your favorite version in the comments section.

 

P. S. -- Actually, there is documentation for how to dance the Watusi.  See it and try it after the jump.  And let me know how that works out for you.

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