Dances of the 1960's

Short answer

• The dances of the 1960s were mostly solo dances. Instead of holding a partner and following a set pattern around the floor, dancers often stood apart, faced the music or each other, and moved on their own.
• The Twist started the decade's dance boom. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters recorded "The Twist" first, and Chubby Checker's 1960 version turned it into a national craze that reached number one in 1960 and again in 1962.
• Most later crazes followed the same formula. A catchy song named a dance, television or a club showed people the basic movement, and listeners copied it at parties, school dances and nightclubs.
• The best known names are the Twist, the Mashed Potato, the Pony, the Locomotion, the Madison, the Watusi, the Monkey, the Swim, the Jerk, the Frug and go-go dancing. Each had its own signature movement, but all shared the decade's freer, no touch style.
• The legacy is the modern dance floor itself. Dancing without a partner, dancing in a line, dancing in a group facing the same way, and dancing freely to a record rather than a live band all became normal in the 1960s, and they stayed normal afterward.
• The descriptions in this article are for recognition, not instruction. They explain what each dance looked like in general terms. They are not a dance lesson, and they are not exercise advice.

Why the 1960s changed the way people danced

Before the Twist, most popular social dancing in the United States was partner dancing. Couples held each other, moved together, and followed patterns that both partners had to learn. That style did not disappear in the 1960s. It simply stopped being the only style in the room.

The Twist changed the basic deal. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia notes that before the Twist, most dancing was done by couples who held one another as partners, and that the Twist introduced a new open type of dancing in which people danced apart, not touching. EBSCO’s research summary makes the same point in plainer terms: the Twist was a no touch dance that required no basic steps and allowed liberal improvisation. That combination mattered. A person did not need a partner, a lesson, or a practiced routine. A person needed a record, a little space, and a willingness to look a little unpolished in public.

Television helped the change spread. Dick Clark’s American Bandstand showed teenagers dancing to new records, and the Dick Clark Show gave Chubby Checker a national stage on August 6, 1960, to lip-synch and dance to “The Twist.” Viewers in different towns could see the same movement in the same week, copy it, and then argue about who did it best at the next school dance. Records helped too. A dance song could travel faster than a dance teacher, and a song title could teach the name of a dance before anyone had seen the steps.

Youth culture gave the change its audience. Teenagers had their own records, their own radio programs, their own clothes and, increasingly, their own money to spend on records and dances. Adults joined in as well, and that was part of the Twist story. The dance crossed lines of age and class, from teenagers to adults, from working class dance halls to fashionable nightclubs. That broad appeal also made the new dances a subject of argument. Some adults welcomed a dance that anyone could join. Others worried that the new freedom on the dance floor went too far. The argument itself is part of the history, and it returns later in this article.

The dances also changed because the music changed. Rock and roll, rhythm and blues, soul and, later in the decade, the British Invasion sound gave dancers faster, punchier rhythms than the big band music of an earlier generation. The songs were often short, direct and built around a repeated hook. A dance that matched a hook could be learned in a chorus or two, which was exactly what a novelty dance song needed.

It helps to place these dances in their decade. The 1960s were not only a decade of dance crazes. They were also the decade of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Dance floors did not float free of that history. The same young Americans who danced the Twist and the Monkey were living through school integration debates, televised protests, a war on television news, and a rapid change in what popular music sounded like. The dances in this article were light entertainment, but they were not separate from the country that danced them.

The Twist: the dance that broke the partner hold

No single dance explains the 1960s, but the Twist comes closest. It was not the first solo dance, and it was not the most complex dance of the decade. It was the dance that proved a solo dance could become a national craze, and it set the pattern that dozens of later dances followed.

The song came first, or at least the song title did. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters recorded “The Twist,” and the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia traces the song’s roots further back, through gospel and rhythm and blues traditions and through the Sensational Nightingales, whose member Joseph Wallace had the original idea for a song built around the phrase “do the twist.” Ballard and guitarist Cal Green reshaped the material into a twelve bar blues, and the group recorded it in November 1959. The record was the B side of “Teardrops on Your Letter,” which is a useful reminder that even the decade’s biggest dance did not start as an obvious hit.

Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand, considered Ballard’s version too suggestive for mainstream television audiences. At Clark’s urging, Cameo Parkway recorded a new version with nineteen year old Chubby Checker, whose real name was Ernest Evans, on vocals. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia is direct about the reason: while both Ballard and Checker were African American, the tastemakers at American Bandstand and Cameo Parkway considered Checker, young, cheerful and wholesome looking, more palatable for a broader audience than Ballard. That detail matters for an honest history. The Twist was rooted in Black American music and dance, and its national breakthrough came through a version chosen, in part, because it seemed safer for television.

Checker’s version was recorded in June or July 1960, and it was almost an exact copy musically of Ballard’s version. Clark played it on American Bandstand in the summer of 1960 and had Checker appear in person on the Dick Clark Show on August 6, 1960, to lip-synch and dance to it. The record reached number one on the pop charts that September. Then, in a chart story with no close parallel among non holiday songs, the same recording returned to number one in January 1962, after adults at fashionable clubs such as New York’s Peppermint Lounge had taken up the dance. The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia calls it the only non holiday song ever to reach number one on two separate occasions, in 1960 and 1962.

In plain description, the Twist is easy to picture. Dancers stood with their feet roughly shoulder width apart and swiveled their hips from side to side, with the upper body staying fairly relaxed. Popular descriptions compared the foot movement to stubbing out a cigarette and the arm movement to drying the back with a towel. Those images are colorful, but the important point is simpler: the movement was small, repeatable and forgiving. A dancer could do a modest version and still be recognizably twisting, which is why the dance worked for teenagers, for adults, and for people who would never have attempted a formal partner dance.

The Twist also showed how quickly a dance could move from the street to high society and back again. EBSCO notes that at the Peppermint Lounge, Joey Dee and the Starliters played twist music through the night while fashionable visitors mixed with working class dancers. The Library of Congress National Recording Registry lists Checker’s 1960 recording of “The Twist” as a Registry title, and the Smithsonian’s music collection notes that Checker played a major role in popularizing the Twist dance craze. By the mid 1960s, EBSCO notes, the Twist itself had become passe as a novelty, even as the style it introduced stayed in place.

The Twist’s follow-up hits kept the formula alive. Checker recorded “Let’s Twist Again” in 1961 and “Slow Twistin’” in 1962, the latter as a duet with Dee Dee Sharp, and other companies rushed out their own twist records. The dance had become a product category, and the record industry had learned that a dance name in a song title could sell records even to people who never set foot on a dance floor.

A new dance almost every season

After the Twist, the record industry and the dance floor entered a cycle that lasted most of the decade. A new song named a new dance, dancers learned a signature movement, the song climbed the charts, and then a newer dance replaced it. Some dances lasted a summer. A few lasted years. Many were never meant to last. Their point was novelty, and novelty by definition wears off.

That cycle explains why lists of 1960s dances are so long, and why they disagree. A dance could be huge in one city and unknown in another. A dance could be a hit song in one year and a forgotten B side in the next. The dances below are the ones that left the clearest trace: a hit song, a television appearance, a club scene, or a later revival that kept the name alive. They are grouped by the part of the decade in which they were most visible, but the boundaries are soft. Dances overlapped, borrowed from each other, and returned in later years in new forms.

Early 1960s: the Twist’s first wave of successors

The Mashed Potato. The Mashed Potato was one of the first major successors to the Twist, and it was most visible in 1962. Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time” gave the dance its best known song, and the British Music Collection notes that the dance acquired its initial fame through that record. In plain description, dancers twisted one foot at a time as if mashing potatoes, while the arms moved in a loose, fluttering pattern in front of the body. The name sounds like a joke, and the dance was meant to be fun, but it followed the Twist’s logic exactly: a solo movement, a catchy name, and a song that told listeners what to do.

The Pony. The Pony was popularized by Chubby Checker’s “Pony Time.” In plain description, dancers bounced lightly from foot to foot with a small, prancing movement, as if riding a pony. It was less famous than the Twist, but it showed that Checker himself had become a one man dance factory, able to attach a new name to the same open dance floor style and sell it again.

The Locomotion. “The Loco-Motion” was a 1962 pop song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and recorded by Little Eva. HISTORY’s account of the record notes that Goffin and King first had Dee Dee Sharp in mind for the song, that Sharp turned it down, and that Little Eva, who had recorded the demo, became the artist on the released record. The song reached number one in 1962, and the dance that grew up around it was a line dance with a chugging, train like rhythm, dancers moving together in a line rather than as separate soloists. That detail is worth noting. The Locomotion brought back a group formation, even while keeping the decade’s casual, no hold style. Later versions of the song in the 1970s and 1980s kept the name alive long after the original dance had faded.

The Madison. The Madison was a line dance in which dancers stood in lines and followed steps called out by a leader, with opportunities for individual dancers to show off in the middle of the line. It was more structured than the Twist, and it kept an older tradition alive: the called dance, in which a leader tells the group what to do next. The Madison also showed that the decade’s dances were not all solo improvisation. Some of the most popular dances were group dances with clear rules, and part of their appeal was that a whole room could join in at once.

The Hully Gully. The Hully Gully was another early 1960s dance with called steps and a loose, shaking movement. Like the Madison, it worked best in a group, and like the Mashed Potato, it was tied to hit songs that named the dance in the title. Its steps were deliberately simple, which made it a good party dance: a room full of people could start together, even if no one had practiced.

The Watusi, the Monkey and the mid 1960s animal dances

By the early to mid 1960s, a cluster of dances with animal names had joined the Twist family. They shared the same open floor, the same solo or loose group format, and the same reliance on a hit song. They differed mainly in their signature gesture: the thing a dancer did that told everyone in the room which dance it was.

The Watusi. The Watusi was a solo dance popular in the early 1960s, and the British Music Collection notes that it was popularized by the Orlons’ “The Wah-Watusi,” released in 1962. In plain description, dancers crouched slightly, shuffled their feet, bobbed their heads, and swung their arms in wide arcs to the sides. The name was borrowed for a pop dance, and modern readers should not treat the pop dance as a faithful copy of any African dance tradition. The pop Watusi was an American novelty dance with a borrowed name, not a documented traditional dance, and this article describes only the pop version that appeared on American dance floors.

The Monkey. The Monkey was most visible in 1963, and it was associated with Major Lance’s “The Monkey Time.” In plain description, dancers bent their knees, bobbed their heads, moved their shoulders forward and back, and used their arms in playful, monkey like gestures, including scratching motions and hopping steps. The dance was deliberately comic. It invited exaggeration, and exaggeration was part of the fun. A dancer who did the Monkey too seriously missed the point.

The Swim. The Swim was popular in 1964 and was associated with Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim.” In plain description, dancers moved their arms in swimming motions, alternating strokes in time with the music, while their feet kept a simple stepping pattern. It was a summer dance in feeling, even when danced indoors, and it showed how far the novelty formula could go: any everyday movement, from swimming to mashing potatoes, could become a dance if a song named it and a room full of people agreed to try it.

The Jerk. The Jerk belonged to the mid 1960s, and it was a sharper, jerkier cousin of the earlier dances. In plain description, dancers snapped their heads, shoulders and arms in quick, accented movements, often with the body held fairly still between accents. The name described the movement: a series of small jerks rather than a smooth flow. The Jerk pointed toward the later part of the decade, when dancing became less about a named step and more about sharp, individual expression to soul and rock rhythms.

The Frug. The Frug was a mid 1960s dance craze built around vigorous movement to pop music, with the feet often staying fairly still while the hips and arms did most of the work. The British Music Collection notes that the Frug was a fleeting fad as a social dance, but that it survived on stage thanks to Bob Fosse’s choreography for “The Rich Man’s Frug” in the musical Sweet Charity. That stage afterlife is the Frug’s most lasting contribution. On a social dance floor, the Frug was one more novelty. On stage, Fosse turned its poses, gestures and arm movements into a showpiece, and that showpiece is still the version most people meet today when they encounter the name.

Taken together, these dances show a pattern. The Twist proved that a solo dance could sell. The Mashed Potato, the Pony and the Locomotion proved that the formula could be repeated. The Watusi, the Monkey, the Swim, the Jerk and the Frug proved that the formula could be varied almost endlessly, as long as each new dance had one clear, copyable gesture. The gesture was the brand. Learn the gesture, and you knew the dance.

Go-go dancing and the discotheque

Go-go dancing was different from the named crazes, because it was less a single step and more a job and a scene. Go-go dancers were dancers employed to entertain crowds at nightclubs and other venues where music was played. Their dancing was high energy and free form, rather than a fixed routine, and their presence was meant to set the mood of the room and to encourage the audience to dance.

The scene grew up in the mid 1960s at clubs such as the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which opened in January 1964, and the Peppermint Lounge in New York. A University of Central Lancashire study of go-go dancing notes that the style emerged at both the Peppermint Lounge, where women dancing the Twist on tables gradually developed a freer go-go style, and the Whisky a Go Go, and that go-go dancing soon reached mainstream television through shows such as Hullabaloo and Shindig, where dancers could be seen in clear cages above the dance floor. The cages, the short fringed skirts, the mini dresses and the calf length boots that later became known as go-go boots were all part of the visual package. The dancing itself, however, was the point: continuous, energetic movement to the record playing at that moment, without a partner and without a fixed step.

Go-go dancing also marked a shift in where dancing happened. Earlier dances were often tied to school dances, parties and television shows. Go-go dancing belonged to the nightclub and the discotheque, a venue built around recorded music and dancing rather than live bands. EBSCO notes that the Twist eventually led to the birth of the discotheque in the United States, a nightclub featuring dance records instead of live music performances. Go-go dancing was the human face of that change: a dancer on a platform or in a cage, dancing to records, while the audience danced below.

The go-go scene also raises a question that runs through the whole decade: who was dancing for whom? Go-go dancers were mostly young women, and their work was both performance and atmosphere. Some accounts celebrate go-go dancing as a form of independence and individual expression in a decade when young women were claiming more public freedom. Others note that the work was shaped by club owners and audiences who wanted a particular look. Both points can be true at once. Go-go dancing gave young women a visible, paid place on the nightclub stage, and it also placed them in a setting where appearance was part of the job. A full history of the 1960s dance floor needs both halves of that story.

The music that carried the dances

Dance crazes need dance music, and the 1960s supplied it in abundance. Rock and roll provided the beat for the Twist and its first successors. Rhythm and blues and soul provided the sharper rhythms for the Jerk and the later mid decade dances. Pop songwriters such as Goffin and King wrote dance songs as a craft, building a song around a dance name and a repeated instruction. Television dance shows provided the shop window, and radio provided the repeat play that turned a new dance into a shared reference.

It is tempting to match each dance to one genre, but the real picture is messier. The Twist was a rhythm and blues song turned into a pop hit. The Locomotion was a pop song written by Brill Building songwriters. The Monkey and the Jerk drew on soul and rhythm and blues rhythms. Go-go dancing worked to almost anything with a strong beat, because its movement was free form rather than tied to one song. The common thread was not a single style. It was a beat clear enough to dance to, a song short enough to repeat, and a title memorable enough to shout across a dance floor.

The decade’s later music changed the dance floor again. As rock grew longer, louder and more album oriented toward the end of the 1960s, the short novelty dance song faded. Dancers still danced, but they danced less to named steps and more to the music itself, in the free form style that would lead into 1970s disco dancing. The named craze did not die because people stopped dancing. It faded because the music industry stopped needing a new name every season, and because dancers no longer needed a name to justify moving on their own.

Who danced, who objected, and who got the credit

The 1960s dances are often remembered as innocent fun, and much of the time they were. They are also a useful case study in how American popular culture worked in that decade: who created a style, who popularized it nationally, and who was remembered for it.

The credit question is clearest with the Twist. The song and the dance grew out of Black American musical traditions, and Hank Ballard, an African American rhythm and blues artist, recorded the song first. The national breakthrough, however, came through Chubby Checker, chosen in part because television tastemakers considered him more acceptable for a mainstream audience. Checker was a talented performer in his own right, and his success was real, but the story is incomplete without Ballard and without the gospel and rhythm and blues musicians who shaped the material before either man recorded it. The same pattern repeated, in different forms, with other dances. Many novelty dances were commercialized versions of steps created by African American dancers in clubs in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and the national version was often smoother, simpler and whiter than the club original.

The objection question is also part of the story. Some schools, religious authorities and commentators objected to the Twist and to later fad dances, calling them too suggestive or too wild. Reports from the period describe bans on fad dances at some schools and institutions. Those objections rarely stopped a dance. In many cases, they helped it, by giving teenagers a reason to see the dance as their own rather than their parents’ dance. By the time adults at fashionable clubs were twisting, the dance had already crossed from rebellion to respectability, and its teenage fans had moved on to the next craze. That cycle, from shock to acceptance to boredom, repeated through the decade.

Gender also shaped the dance floor. Partner dancing had given men a leading role by convention: the man led, the woman followed. Solo dancing removed that structure. A woman could dance without waiting to be asked, without following a partner’s lead, and without holding anyone’s hand. A man could dance without knowing a partner routine. That freedom was part of the appeal, and it was part of what made the dances feel modern. Go-go dancing complicated the picture, because it gave women a professional dance role while also placing them on display for a largely male club audience. The decade’s dances therefore point in two directions at once: toward greater freedom on the social dance floor, and toward new forms of display in the commercial nightclub.

Stage dance provides a useful contrast. Social dances such as the Twist and the Monkey were meant to be learned in minutes and danced by anyone. Stage dance, by contrast, was a trained art form with its own vocabulary and careers. Readers who want that contrast can see how different the two worlds were by looking at what a male ballet dancer is called and what that training involves. The 1960s social dances were popular precisely because they were not that world. They asked for enthusiasm, not training, and they rewarded a good gesture more than a perfect technique.

Why the crazes faded, and what stayed

Most 1960s dance crazes faded quickly, and that was by design. A novelty dance sells because it is new. Once everyone can do it, it stops being news, and the record industry moves on to the next name. The Twist lasted longer than most, because it was simple enough to survive its own novelty and because adults adopted it after teenagers had moved on. The Mashed Potato, the Watusi and the Monkey had shorter peaks, because their gestures were more specific and their songs were tied to a single season.

What stayed was not any single step. It was the set of assumptions behind the steps:

• Dancing alone is normal. A person can dance without a partner, without a lesson, and without embarrassment, and the room will not stop to stare.
• Dancing in a group does not need a hold. Lines, circles and loose groups facing the same way are all normal formations.
• A dance can be a song. A title, a hook and a gesture can travel together, and a whole country can learn them from a record and a television show.
• Dancing is for the dancer, not only for the couple. Expression, humor and individual style became legitimate reasons to dance, alongside courtship and display.
• The dance floor belongs to the record. Discotheques, clubs and later dance parties built their evenings around recorded music, with dancers rather than bands as the visual center.

Those assumptions shaped disco dancing in the 1970s, music video choreography in the 1980s, line dances at weddings and parties in later decades, and the short dance trends that spread through social media in the 2000s and 2010s. The steps changed. The idea that anyone can join in, alone, to a record, did not.

A quick timeline

• 1959: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters record “The Twist” as the B side of “Teardrops on Your Letter.”
• Summer 1960: Chubby Checker’s version is recorded and promoted through American Bandstand and the Dick Clark Show.
• September 1960: Checker’s “The Twist” reaches number one on the pop charts.
• 1961: “Let’s Twist Again” and “Pony Time” keep the dance song boom going.
• January 1962: Checker’s “The Twist” returns to number one, after adults at fashionable clubs take up the dance.
• 1962: “Mashed Potato Time” by Dee Dee Sharp, “The Wah-Watusi” by the Orlons, and “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva all tie dances to hit songs.
• 1963: The Monkey is associated with Major Lance’s “The Monkey Time.”
• 1964: The Swim is associated with Bobby Freeman’s “C’mon and Swim,” and the Whisky a Go Go opens in West Hollywood, becoming a center for go-go dancing.
• Mid 1960s: The Jerk and the Frug join the list of named crazes, while go-go dancing spreads to nightclubs and television dance shows.
• Late 1960s: Named novelty dances fade as rock and soul move toward freer, less step bound dancing, but solo and group dancing without a partner remain the norm.

Frequently asked questions

What were the most popular dances of the 1960s?

The Twist was the biggest and most lasting craze of the decade. After it, the best known names were the Mashed Potato, the Pony, the Locomotion, the Madison, the Watusi, the Monkey, the Swim, the Jerk and the Frug, plus go-go dancing as a nightclub style. No single list is complete, because many local dances never became national hits, and many national hits were forgotten within a year.

What is the Twist dance, in simple terms?

The Twist is a solo dance in which dancers stand apart, keep their feet roughly shoulder width apart, and swivel their hips from side to side in time with the music. The arms move loosely, in a motion often compared to drying the back with a towel. It needs no partner, no hold, and no set pattern around the floor, which is why it spread so quickly.

Who invented the Twist?

No one person invented the Twist in a single moment. The song grew out of gospel and rhythm and blues traditions, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters recorded it first in 1959, and Chubby Checker popularized the dance nationally with his 1960 version, promoted through Dick Clark’s television shows. Crediting only Checker leaves out Ballard and the earlier musicians, while crediting only Ballard leaves out the television promotion that made the dance a national craze.

Why did 1960s dances not need a partner?

The Twist broke the partner hold by design. Dancers stood apart and moved on their own, which meant a person did not need to find a partner, learn a partner routine, or follow a leader’s steps. Later dances kept that freedom, even when they used line or group formations. The freedom was part of the appeal, especially for teenagers who wanted to dance without the formal rules of earlier partner dancing.

What was go-go dancing?

Go-go dancing was a high energy, free form nightclub dance style of the mid 1960s, performed by dancers employed to entertain crowds and set the mood of a club. It was associated with venues such as the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood and the Peppermint Lounge in New York, and with television dance shows that showed dancers in cages above the dance floor. Unlike the named crazes, go-go dancing was not one fixed step. It was continuous dancing to whatever record was playing.

Were 1960s dances controversial?

Yes, at first. Some adults, schools and religious authorities objected to the Twist and to later fad dances, seeing them as too suggestive or too uncontrolled. Those objections did not stop the dances, and in some cases they made the dances more attractive to teenagers. By the time fashionable adults were dancing the Twist in 1962, much of the controversy had faded, and the dance had become mainstream entertainment.

Do people still dance 1960s dances today?

Yes, in revivals, theme parties, stage shows, films and dance classes that teach retro styles. The Twist is the most revived, because its movement is simple and its song is still widely known. The Frug survives mainly through Bob Fosse’s stage choreography for Sweet Charity. Most other crazes survive as names and songs rather than as dances people perform regularly, but the solo, no partner style they introduced is still the default on most modern dance floors.

What is the difference between the Twist and the Mashed Potato?

Both are solo dances from the early 1960s, and both use a twisting lower body movement. The Twist centers on swiveling the hips from side to side with the feet fairly planted. The Mashed Potato centers on twisting one foot at a time, as if mashing potatoes, with a looser arm pattern. The songs are different too: the Twist is tied to Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” while the Mashed Potato is tied most closely to Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time” from 1962.

Sources & references

• Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Rutgers University, "Twist (The)," by Jack McCarthy: https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/twist-the/
• EBSCO Research Starters, "Twist (dance)": https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/dance/twist-dance
• Smithsonian Music, Smithsonian Institution, "Rosalyn Drexler's 'Chubby Checker'": https://music.si.edu/object-day/rosalyn-drexlers-chubby-checker
• Library of Congress, National Recording Registry list by artist (Checker, Chubby, "The Twist," 1960): https://loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/registry-by-artist.pdf
• HISTORY, "Little Eva earns a No. 1 hit with 'Loco-Motion'": https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/august-25/little-eva-earns-a-1-hit-with-loco-motion
• British Music Collection, "Dance Suite No. 2: The 1960s Part Two" (notes on the Watusi, Mashed Potato and Frug): https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/node/67639
• University of Central Lancashire, Georgina Gregory, "Go-Go Dancing: Femininity, Individualism and Anxiety in the 1960s": https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/id/eprint/25183/1/25183%20go%20go%20article%20final%20versions.pdf
• Background on the Frug, the Locomotion and related dances, consulted through general dance history summaries, including: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frug_(dance)