Disco Dance: History and Popular Disco Dance Moves

Disco dancing is a retro form of dancing associated with the disco music and disco dance clubs of the 1970s. Disco dancing doesn’t require a partner, and can be performed solo, as a duo, or in large groups. Disco dancing typically happens on the dance floor of a club, with flashing or strobing lights, huge sound systems, and a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. Disco dancing is usually freestyle, but some disco dances have a small amount of choreography to allow for line dancing.

Disco dance emerged alongside the explosion of disco music in the 1970s.

• Beginnings: Disco began in the late 1960s and early 1970s as an alternative dance music to popular rock music. At clubs and discotheques in places like New York City and Philadelphia, DJs played records that their predominantly Black patrons could dance to, and these venues became popular places to hear soul, funk, jazz, and R & B music. Musicians recognized that DJs needed playlists that could keep dancers dancing for hours, with repetitive driving beats, syncopated bass lines, and infectious hooks. From the beginning, disco music and dancing were associated with queer nightlife subcultures, exemplified by artists like Sylvester, an androgynous performer known as the “queen of disco.”
• Mainstream acceptance: In the late 1970s, the disco music craze inspired popular artists such as Donna Summer, Diana Ross, Gloria Gaynor, Chic, and KC and the Sunshine Band. Hit disco songs like “Stayin’ Alive” and “You Should Be Dancing” by the Bee Gees and “Disco Inferno” by the Trammps brought disco to the mainstream. Disco dancing became well known through the TV show Soul Train, where dancers would perform their best disco moves between two lines of other dancers.
• “Disco Sucks”: Disco’s mainstream acceptance led to a backlash directed towards disco’s predominantly Black, queer creators and fanbase. In 1979, Detroit radio station DJ Steve Dahl gathered people in Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, to trash disco records in an event called the Disco Demolition, under the “Disco Sucks” movement.
• The end of disco: Even though the disco era had peaked and ended by the early 1980s, disco hits fill dance halls around the world, and disco elements arise in the popular music of today.

Disco dancing is a loose dance style, less about specific dance moves and more about the music and freedom of the dance floor.

• Music: An important element to disco dancing is the relationship to the music. Disco dancers use the driving rhythm of the music to punctuate their dance, hitting the beat of the music and maintaining their rhythm for long disco parties.
• Side step: In order to keep dancing for long stretches of time, disco dancers perform side steps in between their larger dance breaks. This gives dancers a reprieve between moves while still maintaining the beat.
• Popped hips: As a social dance, disco dancing is often about flirtation and courting on the dance floor. As such, disco dancing makes use of a lot of pelvic actions, popping your hips forward or to the side.
• Pointing fingers: A lot of disco dancers use pointed fingers as a common gesture. Posing with one arm up, finger pointing to the sky, is a classic disco pose that John Travolta made famous in the disco-inspired film Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Here are some popular disco moves and dance steps.

1. 1. The Hustle: The Hustle is a popular dance with a sequence that consists of taking three steps back and three steps forward, accompanied by arm movements including finger pointing to the sky and moving your fists around each other in circles.
2. 2. The Get Down: The Get Down is a dancing stance that derives from African dances. It is a wide-legged stance, as the dancer bends at the waist and knees to get close to the floor.
3. 3. The Bump: This move requires at least one other partner. While dancing on the dance floor, swing your hips towards a partner's hips and bump them together. Then jump to face the opposite direction to bump your other hip against your partner’s other hip.
4. 4. The Snap: To perform this move, swing one arm up in a semicircle in front of you, clicking your fingers at the top. Then swing your arm back down in a semicircle in front of you. Pop your hips with each swing of the arm.
5. 5. The Bus Stop: The Bus Stop is a disco line dance that an entire dance party can perform together. It is a simple combination, adapted from the Hustle, where dancers do a three-step move to the side, then to the other side, then they repeat the steps while twirling.

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