(For those coming late to the party: this was originally posted on APRIL FOOL'S DAY. You may thereby deduce that it is an extended joke, not serious dance history!)
Many dance historians specializing in Western European and American social dance first became aware of the existence of twerking in the context of the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, during which the performer Miley Cyrus notoriously twerked with singer Robin Thicke. Twerking, of course, has a substantially longer history both in the hip-hop scene in the United States, dating back to the African-American community in New Orleans in the early 1990s, and still further back to its origins in the dances of West Africa.
Over the course of dance history, however, many dances make brief early splashes in western society and then vanish, only to reappear somewhat later. Dances like the maxixe took more than one appearance to achieve any kind of popularity (and, arguably, didn't really achieve it until further mutating into samba). What has not been widely known before today is that twerking may be counted among these dances, with substantial visual evidence of an early form of twerking in Europe more than a century ago.
The saga of Edwardian twerking begins with the adventuress Lady Felicia Eunice Bertwhistle-Popplewell, fondly known to her chums as Bertie, whose extensive exploration of the Southeastern South Seas in her fully-staffed 140-foot luxury yacht resulted in an impressive haul of miscellaneous artifacts, the complete extinction of several native birds, two illegitimate children, and a set of extraordinary terpsichorean practices learned in the torrid jungles of an island marked on her personal charts only as "Hacker, Darling".
The highly-sexualized posture of Edwardian twerking is quite visible in this illustration of Bertie, shown at left dancing in one of her highly fashionable "Lady Adventuress" outfits. Bertie later introduced these dances to a secret society of young Edwardian socialites on the highly-polished parquet floors of her centuries-old family manor, Bertwhistle-upon-Pinwater. Such secrets faring about as well as secrets told to dozens of others usually do, the resulting scandal was enormous. Society matrons rushed to condemn Bertie and her clique of idle young wastrels and young women of suspiciously flexible moral character. Society gentlemen, grimly escorted by said matrons, blandly agreed that it was quite, quite awful that such goings-on were taking place on isolated country estates.
Bertie, unfazed by such criticism, retired to Bertwhistle-upon-Pinwater and continued her life of private hedonism until found drowned at age sixty-one in a pink marble bathtub filled with absinthe.
Bertie's twerking, however, spread quietly throughout society in saucy instructional pamphlets circulated secretly among young ladies and gentlemen. In the wake of the infamous Trickelbank-Plunkett scandal of 1907, twerking pamphlets were burned in Trafalgar Square and a number of young gentlemen left on extended tours of America, but a few surviving pamphlets may be found in library archives today, often miscatalogued (deliberately?) under the names of other dances. Their careful line drawings reveal much about the practice of twerking in the first decade of the twentieth century as well as some scurrilous anecdotes about young English gentry of the era.
It is believed that Bertie originally experienced twerking as a sort of line dance. It appears to have rapidly evolved to performance by couples, incorporating both side-by-side, facing, and back-to-front positions.
Note that both ladies and gentleman adopted the classic arched back/hips back posture. It is noted in several pamphlets that practicing the characteristic movement of the dance with hands braced against a wall might be useful for beginners.
A classic face-to-face position, hands resting on or slapping thighs. Dancers could switch at will among the positions, with position changes generally initiated by the lady.
In an incident immortalized in one pamphlet, Miss Rosamund Luckinbill-Munt slapped young Cedric Bulwar-Lytton for making her an improper proposition in the midst of a dance. After her marriage to Felix Pickles, it was rumored that the sixth through ninth of her eleven strapping young sons were actually fathered by Cedric.
It was somewhat difficult for the lady to situate herself appropriately for the climactic front-to-back posture of the dance without looking awkwardly over her shoulder. A gentleman with propriety could gently assist the lady in getting into position. Some hand-to-waist contact was permissible.
Note how the experienced Miss Luckinbill-Munt coyly pulls her skirts forward to further emphasize the "back interest" created by the S-curve corsetry of the day as she assumes the position.
Sadly for the continued secrecy of twerking societies, the well-known cad Nigel Trickelbank was unable to confine his choreographical attentions to ladies of his own class and instead attempted to initiate his siblings' innocent young governess, Miss Fionnula Plunkett, into the mysteries of twerking. Miss Plunkett, a Methodist, was said to have "screeched the roof down" in her initial resistance to these malignant attentions and was subsequently relieved of her position for disturbing Great-Great-Grandmother Trickelbank at breakfast. After this incident became public, the secret twerking societies were aggressively suppressed and appear to have died out completely sometime before the first World War.
In From Twerking to Tragedy (London, c1908), one tattered copy of which was found in the Trickelbank family archives when they were auctioned after the bankruptcy of the family in the early 1950s, the tale is told that Miss Plunkett, unable to secure further respectable employment, left England and was later seen dancing in nightclubs in Paris wearing face paint and feathered hats (left). Her loyal family pursued her to Paris to rescue her from this sordid lifestyle, only to be told by the tragic danseuse that, having no hope of a respectable marriage, she was determined to form an all-female anthropological expedition and part-time dance troupe who would travel the world demonstrating the superior morals and extraordinarily flexible spines of English womanhood while discovering new dances to introduce to society.
The family returned to England, brokenhearted, and Miss Plunkett and her company of Amazonian adventuresses set sail for the mysterious isles of the Southwestern South Seas, never to be heard from again.
This post is dedicated to Victor, who asked about dances people never hire me to teach.
Why have I read this?
Posted by: Inсurable one | April 02, 2015 at 04:05 AM
Incurable curiosity?
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | April 08, 2015 at 10:35 AM
...clever...
Posted by: rc | June 04, 2015 at 05:15 PM
Hello, my co-workers and I have had so much fun with this article. We would love to know if this is a parody or true so that we can research furthur. Thank you!
Posted by: Hayley | July 25, 2015 at 02:49 PM
Hi Hayley,
It's an April Fools parody, though the illustrations are real and from an actual dance, and there are some little clues about it buried in the silliness. I'm going to put a tag on top to make that a little clearer for people!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | August 01, 2015 at 12:19 AM