Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103150262
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TERRY LEE GOODRICH FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You've got another chance - a new dance.
"Some people do it with a little sexy twist," says Eric Redwine, 20, bartender and dance enthusiast. "Some people do it with a more energetic power. And some people just do it regular."
We're talking The Bartman, a dance craze inspired by that anathema of parents everywhere - TV's Bart Simpson.
If you're not among the enlightened, you need to watch for the "Do The Bartman" video on TV. It's been running on MTV and some other cable channels.
It all starts when the spike-haired, yellow, bug-eyed kid turns mutinous at a fourth-grade dance recital, stealing the show with his funky dance style - a marked contrast to the more staid performance of his classmates.
"It's so funny, because I was watching the video, and he was jammin'," says Redwine, who tends bar and cooks at L.C.'s Blues & Jazz Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Redwine's name also is on the Wall of Fame at Fort Worth's Aragon Ballroom, where teens are all but throwing their hips out of joint as they mimic Bart's style.
"It's dropping your hips and waist and going with that - just like Bart did," Redwine explains authoritatively, demonstrating.
His right foot is a little in front of the left, and he pulses his right hip forward, back, forward, and then - as the hip moves back again - a quick hop and foot change on the fourth beat. Now - on the count of one - his left foot is forward and he's thrusting his left hip forward, back, forward - all without missing a beat. Then another hop-change, and repeat.
That dance - or something close to it - is being done coast to coast, everywhere from slumber parties to nightclubs.
Some folks do it with a sensuous roll of the hips; but for others, unskilled at undulation, a basic back and forth will do.
Once the lower half of the body has the dance mastered, it's time to get the arms and hands into the act. Think of an Egyptian hieroglyphic. Or, if you draw a blank there, summon Steve Martin's King Tut routine from the dusty attic of your mind and mimic it.
The dance is done, appropriately enough, to "Do The Bartman," from the album "The Simpsons Sing the Blues," which has been in the Top 10 of the charts for several weeks. (Accomplished musicians - among them B.B. King, Joe Walsh and Dr. John - make bearable the caterwaulings of the Simpson family.)
But sorry, Bartman fans, the kid really offers nothing new, says Russ Arnold, director of the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Fort Worth.
The hand movements glimpsed in the video stem from older dances such as The Egyptian and The Swim; the video also has a snippet in which convicts in striped jail duds do The Bartman, a throwback to a scene in Elvis' movie "Jailhouse Rock."
Furthermore, "I can see movements in the tape, but not like the Moonwalk, where you could actually see and copy it," he says. "This is diffused."
So don't look for Arnold to teach it.
In fairness to Bart, though, "they weren't really out to set a dance craze per se when they made this video," Arnold says. "Somebody in a bar somewhere just said, `Let's do the Bart Simpson.' "
by CNB