Twerk
Also known as: Twerking, Bounce Dance, Booty Popping
History & Cultural Context
Twerk is a social dance of the New Orleans bounce scene, a local hip-hop subgenre that took hold in the city's housing developments at the start of the 1990s. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the modern dance sense of the word to 1993 and DJ Jubilee's "Do the Jubilee All", released on Take Fo' Records; Jubilee, whose given name is Jerome Temple, had been building the bounce sound at block parties in the St. Thomas development from around 1990. The word itself is far older, since the OED traces "twirk", meaning a twisting or jerking movement, to 1820, but the dance belongs to bounce. Its antecedents run to West and Central Africa. Mapouka, from the Dabou area of southeast Cote d'Ivoire and danced among the Ahizi, Alladian, Dida and Avikam peoples, entered the Ivorian music scene in 1991 and shares twerk's core action of shaking the rear while bent forward and facing away; the Ivorian government banned it from public performance and television in March 1998 as lewd and obscene, a prohibition that ended in 1999, and comparable bans followed in Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin and Cameroon. Bounce's queer performers, above all Katey Red and Big Freedia, carried the dance to national audiences from the late 1990s onward.
Cultural Significance
Twerk is Black New Orleans cultural production, developed largely by working-class Black dancers and carried nationally by Black queer and gender-nonconforming bounce artists. Its mainstream adoption from 2013 onward, most visibly through white pop performers, drew sustained and well-founded criticism for detaching the dance from that scene while its originators saw little of the resulting money or credit, and Big Freedia publicly objected that what was being presented as twerking was not the dance she had spent a career performing. Teaching or performing twerk without naming bounce is the central ethical failure in this style.
Characteristic Movement & Technique
The knees stay bent and the feet planted or shifting in a wide stance while the pelvis tilts rapidly between anterior and posterior positions, driven by the hip flexors, glutes and lower abdominals against a braced spine. Variations include standing, squatting, hands-to-knees, wall and inverted positions, with the upper body kept comparatively quiet so the isolation reads cleanly.
Partnering Dynamics
Twerk is danced solo or in groups and has no lead-follow structure. Its social setting is circular and competitive, with dancers taking turns in a ring and responding to the DJ's calls and to each other, which places it closer to a hip-hop cypher than to a partner dance.
Competitive Context
There is no formal ranking body. Competition happens socially, in bounce clubs and dance battles, and commercially through studio twerk teams and choreography contests; Big Freedia led a mass twerking Guinness World Record attempt in New York in 2013.
Regional Variations
New Orleans bounce remains the reference form, tied to the city's recurring local samples and chant structures. Atlanta and Houston developed adjacent booty-shaking traditions at different tempos, and the studio twerk taught internationally is generally a choreographed, technique-first adaptation rather than the social form.
Common Misconceptions
Twerk did not begin with Miley Cyrus's 2013 VMA performance or with social media; the dance sense of the word is attested in DJ Jubilee's 1993 bounce recording, and the movement has older West and Central African antecedents such as mapouka. It is also not simply improvised shaking, but a trained isolation requiring specific control of the pelvis, hip flexors and core.
Peak Popularity
Signature Figures
- DJ Jubilee (Jerome Temple)
- Big Freedia (Freddie Ross Jr.)
- Katey Red
Notable Codifiers
- DJ Jubilee
- Big Freedia
Sources & Further Reading
Cultural & Historical Context
Twerk emerged from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States during the 1990s—present day. Understanding the cultural roots, musical traditions, and social circumstances of this era enriches appreciation for the dance's characteristics and significance.
Formative Influences
Codifiers & Standardizers:
DJ Jubilee, Big Freedia
Signature Movement Vocabulary:
DJ Jubilee (Jerome Temple), Big Freedia (Freddie Ross Jr.), Katey Red
Primary Source Documents
The Library of Dance contains public-domain primary sources for dance history. Copyrighted modern syllabi are indexed with purchase links to their respective copyright owners. Search by dance name or codifier to discover primary source documents.
Last reviewed: August 2026 — This dance profile synthesizes historical research, cultural documentation, and contemporary practice knowledge to provide authoritative context.
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