[narrator] In 1983,
TV history was made when Michael Jackson did this.
It was just 2.5 seconds,
and yet, it left a permanent cultural mark.
But three decades earlier, at Harlem's Apollo Theater,
Bill Bailey did the exact same move.
It's a common story.
Madonna's choreography, in her 1990 video "Vogue,"
made it a party trick to strike a pose.
But voguing had been an underground culture for years.
After Miley Cyrus shook her butt at the VMAs in 2013,
twerking was added to the Oxford Dictionary.
But the rapper Big Freedia was bouncing that **** in her videos
back when Miley still thought boys had cooties.
This video kicked off one of the biggest dance crazes of 2019
and helped Charli D'Amelio's rise to TikTok royalty.
But another teenager, Jalaiah Harmon, actually invented The Renegade,
posting this video weeks earlier.
And the moves in that dance sequence go back way further than that.
Built on decades of hip hop and African dance.
Social dance is essentially group-think.
We figure out together how we want to move and we give it a go.
[narrator] And that's happening faster than ever before.
-What are the hottest dances? -They have "Up" by Cardi B.
Oh, my gosh, me and Chris made that dance. That's viral.
-This right here. -"Corvette Corvette."
-"Laffy Taffy."
We were dancing to "Old Town Road" way before it was a hit.
-Yeah. -Like this too.
You're vibing.
-"Lock it, lock it." -"Hit the Quan."
-Tap the wall. -Like shake it, clap.
It's like "Ju Ju On."
Basically, every hit song in the last two years
has had a dance challenge.
[narrator] All of these dances have been performed by millions,
but there's a lot of money to be made off of a dance craze.
In between Charli D'Amelio's dance videos,
you'll find her lounging in an exclusive Dunkin' pajama set
and posing with other Dunkin' merch,
one of the many brands eager to reach her more than 117 million followers
for up to an estimated six figures per post.
And the game Fortnite literally sells dance crazes.
The couple dollars people pay for add-ons like these
add up to billions of dollars a year in profit.
There's a very clear kind of inequality
between the biggest money-makers who make money off of dance trends
and then everyone else.
[narrator] So, what makes a dance a craze?
And who should get the profit from it?
[man 1] Some women freed of restraint found release in the Charleston.
[woman] From now on, dancing and fun are one and the same thing
for the boy and girl.
Al Gore and I will do the Macarena.
Everybody out there doing the Soulja Boy, everybody's Superman.
[man 2] They choose their own style and give it their all.
[Rowland] Humans are pretty weak animals.
We're not very fast.
We're not very strong, and our skin is very soft.
To predators, we seem like pretty suitable prey.
So according to one evolutionary theory, we learned a trick.
By standing together and moving in sync,
we can make ourselves look like a much bigger beast and scare away predators.
In other words,
we may have started synchronizing to survive.
It's hardwired into us.
If two people sit in rocking chairs beside each other,
they'll subconsciously start moving back and forth in parallel.
And when we move in sync, our bodies give us a jolt of endorphins,
which encourages us to do it more to intimidate our enemies,
to worship our gods, to celebrate,
to grieve, and to connect as a community.
But strangers moving in sync with each other?
That's a pretty recent phenomenon.
Dance crazes have really amazing life cycles
that have several, sort of, portions.
[drumroll]
So there's always a kind of originaire community
that starts to think, "Hey, what if this was a dance?"
And then that dance gets shared out, usually in a really local context.
[Rowland] In the case of arguably the world's first dance craze,
that would be the mountain villages of Austria.
"Waltzen" in German means "to turn."
And couples would spin and also move together in a circle around the room.
This was very different from the popular dances in Europe's royal courts,
which were rigid and difficult, with detailed choreography
down to where to look and what facial expression to have.
Men and women held each other at arm's length,
but the waltz was more intimate, looser, faster.
Women would even lift their skirts up a little,
scandalously exposing their ankles.
But even an amazing dance like this can't become a craze
unless it finds a way to spread.
According to one theory, you can thank Napoléon Bonaparte,
whose army plowed through Europe in the early 1800s
taking the waltz with it.
Napoléon never invaded England,
but the waltz did.
And then it sailed on ships across the Atlantic to the United States.
But that's only half the journey.
Then there's the part where, and this is pretty much inevitable,
there'll be people who are essentially haters.
[drumroll]
In the US, the 1840 edition of Etiquette for Ladies, said of the waltz,
"There is something in the close approximation of persons,
in the attitudes, and in the motion,
which ill agrees with the delicacy of woman."
Others warned it could incite "violent emotions,"
"agitation," "nervous symptoms,"
and "do more injury to the young than many of the vices
that are preached against from the pulpit."
But…
The dance will not be denied. People have to dance.
[Rowland] Bringing us to the final step.
The waltz craze lasted for roughly two centuries,
making the careers of some composers, like…
[man 1] Johann Strauss.
[Rowland] …with his hit waltz song, "The Blue Danube."
[man 2] Probably more people have dipped and swayed and twirled to this waltz
than to any other.
[Rowland] But the waltz would have a hard time becoming a craze today,
in large part because it doesn't fit inside the frame of a phone.
The common joke about TikTok dances
is that they look like you're conducting air traffic
because they're so upper body oriented and they have kind of angular movements.
[Rowland] So they stay inside the frame, and then center stage is your face.
[Zhang] If you ask Charli D'Amelio,
she'll say that facial expressions are the number one key
to making a good video.
People want that kind of animated expression.
[Rowland] The most popular TikTokers know how to use their stanky face,
the coy tongue bite, and the "uh-uh!" face,
all while doing really fast moves.
And the life cycle of a dance craze has gotten faster too.
First, you invent a dance.
I was just bored one day on the bus coming home.
I was like, "This is a good song, I'll make up a dance to it."
[Rowland] And then, you decide to share it.
Maybe you post it on Dubsmash, a TikTok rival.
Dubsmash came first.
I would say Black creators were all on Dubsmash.
[Rowland] And after you post it, suddenly your friends start doing it.
Which feels awesome. And then, amazingly,
your friends' friends start doing it.
One of them posts their video to TikTok,
and suddenly, a famous TikToker is doing your dance.
You can't even believe it.
And before you know it, thousands of people are doing it.
My dance hash just went viral!
[Rowland] Other big influencers are jumping in on the trend.
And now YouTubers are creating whole tutorials about how to do it.
Meanwhile, that famous TikToker's followers have skyrocketed,
and that kind of following is power,
because now, maybe record labels see a potential new pop star
and a national TV show invites them on to promote their record.
And joining us in studio, Addison Rae is here.
[Rowland] And to give a demo of all those fun dance crazes on TikTok,
including yours.
So when my dance was on Jimmy Fallon at first,
I see Addison Rae do it, I was like…
I was, like, shocked, 'cause I was like, "Oh, my gosh."
It was like, "Wow, my dance is on national television."
All these people, like, see my dance.
But the bad part about it was, they don't know it's me and Mya's dance.
[Rowland] That 2021 Jimmy Fallon segment didn't credit the creators
of any of these dances, most of whom were Black teenagers.
As I sit down, you start to think. You're like,
"Dang, bro, I wish that was me performing my own dance."
[Rowland] And that feeling is almost as old as dance crazes themselves.
Because after the waltz,
most dance crazes didn't come out of Europe.
They started in the African American community.
When African Americans were enslaved and brought to the United States,
drumming was banned.
So we learn how to keep the beat on our bodies.
That beat is kind of a basic Pattin' Juba beat.
[Rowland] After emancipation…
It becomes the foundation of the Charleston.
[Rowland] …named for the southern city where it was invented by Black Americans
in their first years of freedom.
It becomes a dance that allows people to express
a kind of liveliness and imagining something else, like,
"What if I lived in a big city, and not South Carolina? How would I move?"
[swing music playing]
[Rowland] And then it spread,
many believe thanks to a group of orphans who had a touring brass band
and performed the Charleston when they played.
When millions of African Americans migrated north,
they took the dance with them,
arriving in New York City just when nightclubs were taking off,
where it was embraced by hip, young white people
and despised by their parents.
Several cities banned it.
Doctors warned that "Charleston knee" could shorten your lifespan,
that kids were dancing themselves into "physical wrecks"
with "overstrained hearts" and "a dozen other disorders."
But the dance couldn't be stopped.
Debuting on Broadway in 1923
in one of the first all-Black productions.
And then the American dancer, Josephine Baker,
the Beyoncé of her time, carried it across Europe,
and audiences flocked for a chance to see it.
[man] Charleston caught the spirit of the '20s
and everyone was doing it.
There was this promise--
And this is how I wanna do it, as a gesture.
This vitality of a kind of electrified future.
[Rowland] The Charleston is one way we remember the Roaring '20s.
The style, the energy, who was there.
But in forgetting the original dance,
it's easier to forget the history it represents.
And this whole process gets more complicated
when a single person can get credit for a dance craze
by spreading it to millions of people, instantaneously.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's Chubby Checker!
My favorite thing about this clip is the audience.
They're all sitting in their chairs
and clapping on the wrong beat of the music
and looking very suspiciously at each other like they're not sure
if they should like it or try to do it or not.
[Rowland] The host of that show, Dick Clark,
had asked Chubby Checker to record the song.
The original had made the R&B charts a few years before
by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters.
But it was Checker's version that hit number 1 in the US twice,
and charted around the world.
A few years earlier, Elvis's hip gyrations had scandalized the nation.
While a few years later, youth culture would get radicalized.
The Twist was a dance for its moment,
sexy enough to upset kids' parents, but not too much.
You can definitely do the Twist in the Charleston
or you can definitely do the Twist in the Cakewalk.
It's not its own thing really.
[Rowland] But that was a secret to its success.
It was super easy.
You really didn't have to learn hardly anything to do the Twist.
[Rowland] Chubby Checker followed up with easy-to-follow dances like the Fly,
Pony Time,
Let's Twist Again,
and in 1962, Limbo Rock.
And labels caught on.
Dance crazes sold records.
Some tried to teach people new moves.
but that's hard to do in a series of stills.
So they mostly did what…
[man] Johann Strauss.
[Rowland] …had done two centuries earlier,
hopping on the bandwagon of a dance that was already popular.
"Do You Love Me" by The Contours packed two into one chorus.
♪ I can Mash Potato I can Mash Potato ♪
♪ I can do the Twist I can do the Twist ♪
[Rowland] And then dance crazes got funkier.
Soul Train debuted in 1971.
It's like another planet.
Each dancer does something that's related to what came before
but entirely its own thing.
[Rowland] Soul Train was America's first national program
by and for Black people.
It does that thing where it makes you want to join in
and dance and show your moves too.
I better not try to do that move. That's a little much.
[Rowland] It became the longest running TV show in American history,
popularizing the Funky Chicken,
Popping,
the Robot,
and, of course,
the Soul Train Line.
But while dances like these could sell records,
they weren't exactly valuable by themselves
because they probably couldn't be copyrighted.
In one landmark copyright case,
someone once tried to copyright a phone book.
And the Copyright Office said, "No, you can't copyright the phone book."
But it said in that opinion, anything more creative than the phone book
ought to qualify for copyright protection.
[Rowland] That's not the reality.
The US Copyright Office says a dance has to be a "choreographic work,"
which it says, typically has one or more of these elements:
"Rhythmic movement
arranged in a series that is coherent and expressive
that tells a story for an audience
by skilled individuals and is set to music."
Of course, ballet does this, almost every ballet.
[Rowland] Compare that to something like the Charleston
that was originally created in a social setting by amateurs
for their own amusement.
So the Copyright Office has not been willing to register
what they would consider social dances.
[Rowland] In fact, the US Copyright Office specifically says,
"Social dances and simple routines can't be registered as distinct works,"
with examples like ballroom, square, and swing dances.
But these guidelines were written before the MTV Age.
Music videos like Michael Jackson's "Beat It" in 1983 were a new art form.
In fact, this video is heralded as the first
to pair a pop song with a dance that was challenging and original to the song.
It was the dawn of a new era where people could study a dance on repeat,
like MC Hammer's Hammer Dance.
♪ Stop! Hammer time! ♪
[Rowland] The Digital Underground's Humpty Dance.
♪ Do the Humpty Hump Come on and do the Humpty Hump ♪
[Rowland] Madonna's version of voguing.
♪ Vogue ♪
[Rowland] And, of course, the Macarena.
♪ Hey, Macarena ♪
[Rowland] Then with YouTube,
dances could travel the world easier than ever.
People were Chicken Noodle Souping,
dancing the Passinho,
and teaching each other how to Dougie through the 2000s.
And then Psy's "Gangnam Style" broke YouTube.
Seriously though, it exceeded the maximum number of views a video could have,
and they had to redo the view limits on the site.
And then came social media apps,
like Dubsmash and TikTok where dance crazes were even harder.
In fact, they're called "dance challenges."
And the biggest crazes
aren't coming from musicians anymore to boost record sales,
but from fans who can take an artist's song
and find some degree of fame and fortune just by dancing to it.
And a dance like this is performed in front of an audience of sorts
by people who are pretty skilled.
But it's still not clear if these dances
could be registered at the Copyright Office.
There's very little case law on choreography actually.
[Rowland] The creators behind those Fortnite dances
filed lawsuits claiming the game was unfairly profiting off their work,
including Alfonso Ribeiro who you may know as Carlton.
But a California court said they need to register
first with the Copyright Office.
And in Alfonso's case,
the Copyright Office said it was "too simple a routine."
And so it didn't qualify.
That's one of the ironies of this.
Fortnite, if you tried to touch any of the stuff they're doing,
they would have 10 lawyers suing you for copyright infringement,
threatening to take your house away.
[Rowland] Even the Charleston is on Fortnite.
I wanna go further and say Fortnite should be ashamed of themselves for doing this,
but they aren't ashamed.
[Rowland] But the fact that dance mostly isn't copyrighted
has also been an engine of creativity.
There's definitely something lost if people are very vigorously
pursuing copyright claims against each other for dance moves,
and you kind of lose this creative practice,
and there's not this kind of lineage of reinterpretation
and adding your own commentary.
It would lose the social part of the social dance.
[Rowland] And a lot of the creators behind dance crazes today
don't necessarily want the people who do their dances to pay them.
They just wanna be credited.
[Greene] There are tremendous endorsement opportunities for people who
go viral for these dances.
And so not being credited is really damaging the creators of these works.
[Rowland] In the summer of 2021, Black TikTok creators went on strike.
So it was impossible to ignore how much of today's dance culture
depends on their creativity.
If they know they didn't make up the dance, just give credit.
It is not that hard. It's really not.
[Rowland] But at the very least,
the culture around crediting has started to show signs of change.
Now if you're a popular influencer and you do someone's dance,
there is the expectation that you will
put in your caption DC or dance credits and then tag the original creator.
[Rowland] Even Fortnite has started tagging and crediting
the creators of its latest dance emotes.
And that Jimmy Fallon segment with Addison Rae,
it sparked an immediate backlash. And then…
I was sitting in the car,
actually picking up my grandma for something when I got the message.
I was jumping up and down saying, "Mama, look!"
I felt excited. I was like, "Oh, my gosh."
I was so happy.
I have to be dreaming.
There's no way I'm getting the opportunity to go on national television
in front of all these people to perform my dance.
[Rowland] It was something of an apology segment
and the original creators got to show America their own moves.
[Johnson] After I got to go on Jimmy Fallon,
I have gotten, like, a lot of different opportunities.
I got a lot of promotions, a lot of followers.
Two famous rappers flew me out to LA to do a music video.
That's what I have been working on.
I'm pretty sure it came from the Jimmy Fallon experience.
I hope to become something very big.
I am gonna become something very big one day.
Like, I'm here.
[DeFrantz] The dance is an opportunity to dream.
And this dreaming is something that African Americans,
maybe we don't get this in our history.
African Americans were denied access to social life,
but in the dance, something else is possible.
In the dance, we can express outrage.
We can express desire.
We can express a kind of wondering at a future,
like what could 50 years from now feel like?
I know, I'll make it into a dance. I'll dance like I'm a robot.
That'll help me imagine some kind of futuristic possibility.
[Rowland] Voguing was born in the 1980s when queer communities of color in Harlem
imagined a world where they could be models or royalty or anything they wanted.
The moonwalk comes out of the tap tradition,
a creative response to the ban of drums during slavery.
And the twerking motion
is a foundational move in many West African dances,
often performed in ceremonies celebrating life.
When dances aren't credited,
it's easier to forget that they're historical artifacts
passed down and shaped by each generation,
and in turn defining them.
Our ancestors may have first moved in sync to pretend we were stronger.
But studies show
dance actually makes us more empathetic towards one another.
More patient, more generous, and less prejudiced.
It creates what researchers call "self-other blurring."
The other person feels like they're an extension of us.
[Greene] Dance is life. Isn't it?
It's life itself.
I dance because it makes me feel the most free.
[man 1] It's how I speak.
-It's how I communicate. -[woman] It's what makes me human.
[man 2] I believe it's the most vulnerable form of communication.
[DeFrantz] So dance isn't only about finding a romantic partner,
or kind of showing off something you already know.
Dance also gives us an opportunity to share who we think we want to be.
[all cheering]
[closing theme music playing]