Nutbush (dance)
The Nutbush is a line dance performed to Ike & Tina Turner's song "Nutbush City Limits". The dance, which emerged during the 1970s disco era, is particularly popular in Australia, where it has been taught in schools.
The dance is generally performed by a group of people of all genders and ages at social functions, and has been performed in schools, weddings and community events. The dance is usually performed with the dancers positioned roughly in a box configuration. The steps are fairly simple, so that one can generally pick them up by watching other dancers. A key to the song and dance being a popular combination is that the song has a moderately long introduction before the strong dance beat starts, which allows people who are sitting down to get up to the dance floor, and for all dancers to assemble themselves in a grid.
History
The origins of the Nutbush dance are elusive, but it was clearly named after Tina Turner's place of birth. Despite the wide popularity of the dance, Tina Turner herself never performed it. However, writing in the student newspaper of the University of Sydney, Honi Soit, in 2023, Lucy Bailey noted the similarities between the Nutbush and the dancing of Turner and her backup singers during the 1970s, most particularly in a 1975 clip from the television variety show Cher.A 2024 joint study by the University of South Australia and Edith Cowan University traced the possible origin of the dance to the New South Wales Department of Education, which reportedly developed the dance as a teaching aid in the mid-1970s; the study also found that the Nutbush may have been based on the existing Madison dance, or that the Nutbush may have evolved from schools initially attempting to teach students the Madison.
The Nutbush took off in Australia as it spread in schools during the late-1970s and 1980s. The dance has continued to be implemented in some Australian states' curricula, which has been given as the reason for its enduring popularity in the country.
In 2019 and 2020, the dance gained widespread international attention when it was the subject of various viral TikTok videos.
Implementation
The steps to the dance are as follows:- hands are generally placed akimbo and feet shoulder-width apart in a neutral position. The following moves take place on the beat of the drum during the song.
- the dancers have their weight on the left leg and the right foot is moving: touch their foot to the ground right, and then returned to the initial stance. Repeat once. Weight is changed to the right leg and step is repeated with the left foot, touching left, return, and repeat once.
- the dancers then change weight back to left leg and move their foot back half a pace, touch, and return to the original stance. Twice touch on the right foot and twice with the left.
- the right knee is brought across the body to approximately the height of the left hip twice, continuing with the left knee to right hip twice.
- this is followed by a single kick of the right leg across the body and following with the left.
- and finally, the last four beats of the song are colloquially known as "turn-and-clap" whereupon the dancers turn clockwise ¼, pause, then clap.