One Small Step Trivia Quiz

Answer: Waltz

It is hard to imagine the staid ballroom dance classic the waltz being scandalous. But in the culture of late 18th Century Europe, the waltz was as provocative and sexually suggestive as the tango or the twerk were when they were first performed. The waltz derives from German and Austrian folk dances and starts to make formal appearances in the late 18th century. Waltzing is a partner dance with the partners holding each other either at the hands or with the lead holding the partner about the waist. Often the partners' bodies will touch at the chest or groin region; hence the scandal.

As the popularity of the waltz style grew the term became less descriptive of a particular set of steps and more generic to describe a partner dance with gliding and twirling across the floor. The basic waltz movement or "box step" is a popular introduction to ballroom dance forms. In concept, you make a box step by moving your outside foot forward and your inside foot a quarter turn; when repeated, this glides you across the floor in a square pattern. In actuality when you look at your feet and move in a wooden manner people stop and stare and then laugh (at least in my experience).

Answer: Tap

Look, if you put metal heel plates on my shoes and tell me to run or walk, you will get noise. What you won't get is the rhythmic beauty of a tap dancer. Tap dancing is an old art form that has origins in Celtic folk dances as well as African tribal dances that were the basis for the 19th century Juba or hambone dancing. Modern tap dancing came to the forefront in the early 20th century and is closely associated with American cabaret and vaudeville performances. Tap dancing often uses syncopation to create a rhythm, and is well suited to the artistic improvisation of the dancer.

Basic tap moves include the toe or heel strike or click, stomp or a scuff where the shoe is slid across the floor to make a longer but more muffled sound. As you develop skill, you can combine basic moves together to form more complicated patterns. If you get proficient enough you can attempt the classic "shim sham shimmy" which is a traditional ending for many tap dance routines that consists of eight steps each of the double shuffle and crossover, followed by the more intricate "Tack Annie" (up-and-back shuffles in rapid succession), and finishing with a multi-move series of steps known as "Falling Off a Log".

Answer: Line dances

Line dances are a broad category of dances where the participants repeat a patterned sequence of steps. Line dances are performed by groups of people more or less in lines or rows. The dancers usually do not touch each other and can be facing in alternating or the same direction. In the later part of the 20th-century, line dancing became synonymous with dances performed during the playing of certain popular songs. Line dances have developed around such songs as The Village People's "YMCA", Los Del Rios' "The Macarena", and a number of Country-Western tunes. Often the steps of the dance mimic the actions made by the singer or group performing the song on stage or in a music video.

One of the best parts of a line dance is that the moves are choreographed and remain the same no matter where performed. The dances do not require partners, so that if you can learn the steps to the "YMCA" you can jump into a line at any wedding or social event. On the other hand, the lack of coordinated rhythm becomes painfully evident to anyone watching when everyone else is sliding to the left and you are turned to the right.

Answer: Circle

Circle dancing is accepted as the oldest form of communal dance. Circle dances can be as simple as a group of people forming a circle by holding hands or grasping shoulders and swaying in unison to music or natural sounds. Favorite children's dances such as the ever fun Hokey-Pokey and Ring Around the Rosie (whether referring to the Black Death or not) are examples of circle dances. Numerous cultures incorporate circle dances into their folklore.

Amongst Eastern Europeans, a common circle dance is called the hora or horah. As an Ashkenazi Jew, I grew up dancing horahs at bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings. Dancers form one or several concentric circles and grasp hands or shoulders moving their feet in a right-left-right combination while shuffling sideways. At some point, a chair is brought out, and the honoree is lifted into the air as a small cadre of guests with varying degrees of fitness, struggle to dance and hold them aloft. Depending on the level of sadism in the band or DJ, the horah can thus be a diverting bit of happy exercise or akin to a death march through the Sahara desert with no water.

Answer: Minuet

While the minuet was danced throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries the dance is most closely associated with the French Baroque period during the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715). Minuets were danced in partners with a slow pacing, using small, precise steps often in a Z or figure eight pattern. The dance was more about the clothing style and grace of the dancer and less about the skill or intricacies of the steps. "Minuet" also refers to the classical orchestral music pieces developed by the Baroque masters such as Brahms and Mozart that accompanied the dance.

Minuets did not require a great deal of athleticism or technical skill to master and by the mid 18th Century fell out of favor for being too slow and staid. In the 21st Century, there is not much reason to learn the minuet unless you are invited to a Baroque period costume party.

Answer: Ballet

Ballet as a distinct dance form does not appear until late in the 16th Century. Most of the oldest ballet dances originate in Italy, but by the early 17th Century ballet development was centered in France. French King Louis XIV studied ballet for 20 years, and founded the French Royal Ballet Academy in 1661 and the National Ballet School in 1672. The ballet of the 17th Century is very different from modern ballet as all performers were male, using wigs and masks to play female roles. The 18th Century saw the shift in ballet from men to women and greater emphasis put on the utilization of the toes (en pointe), taking ballet into new artistic directions. However, by the 19th Century ballet had stagnated and was in danger of losing all relevance to European society.

Ballet began a renaissance during the late 19th Century when Russian ballet took the forefront, bringing more acrobatic and aggressive storylines and choreography. I had the tremendous fortune to see all three of the great Russian male dancers of the late 20th Century (Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and Godunov). I also had the wisdom to know that all I could accomplish by attempting a grande jete or entrechat was to hurt myself.

Answer: Square dance

Square dancing is a partner dance that has Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon, and French roots. A typical square dance involves one or several groups of eight people (four couples) who form a square and move through a series of steps called out by a moderator aptly named "the caller". The use of the square concept also dates to the 17th Century French dance form known as the quadrille. Many of the familiar "calls" or moves of American square dancing are derived from the French quadrille. By the mid 19th Century, the square dance had become the primary American dance form along the Appalachian and Western frontiers. Square dance music usually includes fast paced orchestrations heavy on the violin (fiddle).

In the early 20th Century square dancing's popularity declined, giving way to the rise of jazz and swing styles. In the 1930s, efforts were needed to train new callers and preserve the dance form before it disappeared. The 1950s saw a revival of the square dance and standardization of "calls" to create more uniformity from dance to dance. For anyone mildly coordinated, square dancing can be an enjoyable and aerobic experience. Even for the "rhythm challenged", attending a square dance can be a fun chance to dress up and hear classic American "fiddle" music.

Answer: Tango

The tango is a ballroom style that was developed in the working class and lower social echelons of Argentina and Uruguay. The modern tango takes elements from Cuban, African and Argentinean sources, and is most closely associated with the city of Buenos Aires. While there remains debate, the use of the word tango to describe a unique dance started in the 1890s.

The tango is a partner dance that has been described alternatively as walking with emotion and engaging in a seduction to music. There is no primary tango step, and the dance relied heavily on the dancers to improvise in a coordinated fashion. In Buenos Aires, a person can use the "cabeceo" or head nod to discretely request a dance. If the person looks away, the dance is politely refused. In my case, people have been known to get whiplash from making sure not to make eye-contact, lest they have to dance with me.

Answer: Kathak

The varied Indian regional cultures have a long tradition of using dance for both religion and to present visual history. The kathak is one of the most well-known and significant dances and is considered one of the eight classic Indian dances. These eight dances grew out of the Hindi ritualized performance guide called the Natya Shastra. Kathak, which means story in Sanskrit, derives from the tales told by wandering kathakars (akin to European bards) that roamed the villages and communities of Northern Indian. Modern kathak dance incorporates elements of Persian and Central Asian dance brought to India during the Mughal period.

Though both men and women can dance in the kathak style, kathak has historically also been a dance associated with the Indian "tawaif" tradition. Tawaifs were woman who underwent extensive social and aesthetic training similar in form and function to the geisha in Japan. Kathak training was, for the most part, individualized, with the master or guru passing along their secrets to select students over a period of many years. It was not until the 19th and 20th Centuries that kathak schools or standardized forms were established. Kathak dances are performed with brightly colored costumes that include bells worn at the ankle by the dancers.

Answer: Breakdancing

The very thought of breakdancing is enough to make me think of a trip to the emergency room. Indeed, this dance form requires a great deal of athletic ability and coordination and can induce severe injury when attempted by the unskilled. As a dance form, breakdancing or B-boying developed on the streets of New York amongst Latin and African-Americans in the 1970s. The dance's origins are closely associated with the street gangs of New York and include references to martial elements. Breakdancers often performed in competitive "one-upmanship" performances that have been a prelude to, or even a substitute for, violence.

Breakdancing is performed against a background of hip-hop music and is free form and innovative. The dance style incorporates head spins and acrobatic jumps and hand springs as well as punches and kicks more akin to a martial arts ritual. There are four main elements of breakdancing: top rock (standing movements), down rock (hand on the ground movements), power moves (spinning or momentum movements) and freezes (holding in place). With my accident-prone lack of grace I might just hurt myself simply by watching a skilled break dancer. I don't want to think about the damage I might cause by trying a move such as the "windmill" that combines head and torso spinning.