My wife and I took a cruise in 2024. On the last evening, several members of the crew put on a show. Groups of crew members who shared a home country performed popular national dances. This got me thinking about whether the United States had something that could be considered a national dance. If you’d like, take a few minutes to discuss. Does the U.S. have something that could be a national dance?
Years ago, we had a friend who visited India. The group she was visiting showed her how to do one of their national dances. Afterwards, they asked her to teach her a national dance from the United States. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. In the moment, I probably would have said we don’t have one. Our friend, however, was quick on her feet. She showed them how to do the Hokey Pokey.
If you don’t know how to do the Hokey Pokey, watch this instructional video.
Now, I’ve had a lot of time to consider this question. For a short time, the Chicken Dance was on my list of U.S. national dance contenders. In terms of folk dances, yes, the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance should be on the list. We should also include the Electric Slide, the Macarena, and the Hustle.
But do any of those rise to the status of a national dance? I don’t think so. But I do have a national dance nominee: Y.M.C.A. by the Village People. Performed in stadiums, at weddings, and just about any other gathering (save funerals and memorial services, although I would not be surprised to hear that someone requested that their attendees perform it). As further evidence of its worthiness as the national dance, the song Y.M.C.A is on the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry list.
That’s pretty remarkable for a song about men picking up men.
On its surface, Y.M.C.A is a song about wholesome activities, which is certainly what the actual YMCA would prefer we think. The lyrics have plausible deniability. The YMCA does have “many ways to have a good time,” and they do indeed “have everything for young men to enjoy.” Such as basketball and swimming. But the double entendre is hard to miss. The album that features the song is called Cruisin’. And the original music video is worth a watch. At the 2:35, 2:53, and 3:11 marks, they dance on the sidewalk with the Greenwich Village Ramrod bar in the background. If Ramrod sounds like a gay leather bar, you would be right.
And, sure, Macho Man is about getting in shape and In the Navy is about the importance of military service. But back to my nomination for a national dance.
When I first watched the Y.M.C.A music video, I was surprised to discover that the Y.M.C.A. dance had not yet been born. The Y is there, but the other letters are not. That didn’t happen until the Village People performed the song on American Bandstand in January 1979. At the 6:25 mark, Dick Clark cues the audience to do the dance. According to a Spin magazine article, at that particular taping were “a bunch of kids bused in from a cheerleader camp” (Pearlman, 2008). Cheerleaders gave us the dance.
Anyway, performing the Y.M.C.A (national?) dance with a group of strangers gives us about three and half minutes to all be part of the same ingroup. For this brief time, we can ignore our political differences, our sports team allegiances, and our divisive family disagreements.
If you have the right class for it—before covering ingroups—play Y.M.C.A and encourage your students to dance along. To close your discussion of ingroups, point out how the dance created a temporary ingroup. Ask your students to work in small groups to identify other ways temporary ingroups can be created. Finally, if you haven’t yet, show your students the TV2 Denmark All That We Share video.
And that show that the ship’s crew performed? They included Y.M.C.A. Perhaps its an international dance.
Reference
Pearlman, J. (2008, May 27). “Y.M.C.A.” (An Oral History). Spin. https://www.spin.com/2008/05/ymca-oral-history/
