Here's a 1966 sitting-down dance that is clearly a direct descendant of the late 1950s hand jive: Table Talk, published in a dance manual that was a tie-in to the musical variety television series Hullabaloo. The series ran from 1965 to early 1966 on American television channel NBC, amassing an impressive lineup of stars as hosts and performances by major musical acts (including The Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, and The Supremes).
An important element of the show was a dance troupe, choreographed by multi-talented actor-director-dancer-choreographer David Winters (among many other things, he originated the role of A-Rab in West Side Story (1957) and was recast in the 1961 film as well) called the Hullabaloo Dancers. They were a talented group whose alumni included Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie, choreographer/director and star (Cassie), respectively, of the 1975 Broadway musical, A Chorus Line. There's a video of the Hullabaloo dancers here. The video quality is poor, but their skill shines through. They still have a dedicated Facebook fan page, and a "reconstruction" of Hullabaloo was briefly featured with Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - the clip may be seen here.
The show spawned a book, The Hullabaloo Discothèque Dance Book, which featured instructions accompanied by photo spreads to help dancers learn popular 1960s dances like the Monkey, Frug, Jerk, etc. It also included three "brand-new dances created specially for this book", though only two are labeled as such, the Bombay and Table Talk. Two dancers, presumably from the dance troupe, posed for the photos. I haven't managed to identify them by name.
Table Talk is nothing like the other dances in the book, which are all solo or couple dances. As noted above, although it's not actually labeled as such, it's basically a hand jive choreography, very much in the style of the late 1950s hand jive. That's what caught my eye -- it's the rare hand jive found between the late 1950s and the material published when Eric Clapton covered "Willie and the Hand Jive" in 1974.
Was Table Talk actually a popular dance? I seriously doubt it, though the book seems to have sold enough copies (perhaps because it was published by Scholastic Book Services, a very effective book distributor via book clubs and schools) that one can't rule out people having actually tried it. I'm reconstructing it here more to fit it into the larger hand jive picture than because I think it's an important part of late-1960s dance repertoire.
Here's my reconstruction, accompanied by the photos for clarity. The notation is beats, not bars; "2b" means two musical beats. Click on the images to enlarge.
Table Talk (34-beat hand jive)
2b Stretch right arm forward, parallel to table, palm down
2b Repeat with left arm
2b Right hand to left shoulder
2b Left hand to right shoulder
2b Left hand to left knee
2b Right hand to right knee
2b Clap twice
2b Stretch left arm forward, palm down, and look at hand
2b Right arm forward, palm down, and look at hand
2b Turn left palm up and look at it
2b Repeat with right palm
2b Clap twice
2b Hands in fists, left fist up and back, right fist tap twice under left elbow
2b Right fist up and back, left fist taps twice under right elbow
2b Left hand passes twice over right
2b Right hand passes twice over left
2b Clap twice
And here's the whole sequence without the illustrations interspersed, for ease of reading:
2b Stretch right arm forward, parallel to table, palm down
2b Repeat with left arm
2b Right hand to left shoulder
2b Left hand to right shoulder
2b Left hand to left knee
2b Right hand to right knee
2b Clap twice
2b Stretch left arm forward, palm down, and look at hand
2b Right arm forward, palm down, and look at hand
2b Turn left palm up and look at it
2b Repeat with right palm
2b Clap twice
2b Hands in fists, left fist up and back, right fist tap twice under left elbow
2b Right fist up and back, left fist taps twice under right elbow
2b Left hand passes twice over right
2b Right hand passes twice over left
2b Clap twice
The first part of the dance, with the two-beat arm movements, is a bit silly, though I suppose they make more sense if there's actually a table in front of you - note that there isn't one in the photos! But the last ten counts, with the fist-taps and hand-passes, are classic 1950s hand jive movements, as described in two of my previous posts on hand jive, here and here.
Music
There's no specific music for Table Talk, but a little experimentation demonstrates that it's much more fun with brisk music, around 170-175 beats per minute. Digging through 1960s hits, I settled on the Wilson Pickett cover of "Land of 1000 Dances", which reached #6 on the charts in 1966. The song clocks in at 175, and it's a fun piece that makes you want to move. Its chorus is still well-known, even by people who have no idea what the name of the song is:
Na, na-na na-naaa
Na-na na-naaa
Na-na-na na-na-na
Na-na na-naaa
Try Table Talk to this video:
Any other late-1960s piece of similar tempo would do just as well, of course.
Improvisation
The sequence is given above as as published, but the book also noted -
"You can make up as many variations as you wish, with partners following each other a beat late, à la Simon Sez."
That's clear enough, though a one-beat lag is difficult to do at speed and produces interesting rhythmic effects.
Along with mixing and matching the movements above, any of the other 1950s hand jive movements described in my posts here and here would be perfectly suitable to incorporate. Keeping the two-count arm movements in the mix would give it more Table Talk-specific style; eliminate them and it becomes simply a hand jive.
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The Hullabaloo Discothèque Dance Book is easily available from used book sellers on Amazon, ebay, and elsewhere. Purchase "Land of 1000 Dances" from Amazon here:
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