Locking (dance) - History

History

The beginning of Locking can be traced to one man, Don Campbell. In the late 1960s he put together several fad dances adding moves of his own (known as the the "Lock") when performing. The original lock was created by accident: Don Campbell couldn't do a move called the 'The Funky Chicken' and stopped at a particular point whilst moving his arms, creating a 'locking' effect. He wasn't able to perform it fluently, for he couldn't remember which step to take next. (Even the acting towards the audience was spontaneous: when people started laughing at Don because of his unfamiliar moves, he responded by pointing at them.) These halts soon became popular as Don added them into his performances. The resulting dance was called Campbellocking, which was later shortened to Locking. In the early 1970s this set off a movement of Locking dance groups, notably Campbell's group The Lockers. Another locker called Jimmy "Scoo B Doo" Foster and Greggory 'Campbellock Jr.' Pope and others set the foundation for locking dance and clothes style.

Clothes style can consist of loud striped socks, pegged pants that stopped at the knees, bright colorful satin shirts with big collars, big colorful bow ties, gigantic Apple Boy hats, and white gloves.

Later locking became part of the growing hip hop dance culture, and has influenced styles such as popping, B-boying and liquidizing. Locking is still quite popular. Dancers are trying to keep it alive.

Read more about this topic:  Locking (dance)

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.
    William Burroughs (b. 1914)

    The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)