Twerking

Twerking (; possibly from 'to work') is a type of dance where participants throw or thrust the hips back or shake the buttocks, often in a low squatting stance. It is performed chiefly, but not exclusively, by women.

Twerking's origins lay in West and Central Africa, where traditional dances such as Mapouka from the Ivory Coast and other related pelvic dances emphasized expressive hip and buttock isolations in ceremonial, celebratory, and social settings. These traditions were later tethered and appropriated by New World populations like Haitians in Kole mabouya or Americans in the New Orleans bounce scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Twerking is part of a larger set of characteristic moves "unique" to the New Orleans style of hip-hop known as "bounce". Moves include "mixing", "exercising", the "bend over", the "shoulder hustle", "clapping", "booty clapping", "booty poppin", "the sleeper" and "the wild wood"—all recognized as booty shaking or bounce. Twerking is one among other types of choreographic gestures within bounce.

As a tradition shaped by local aid and pleasure clubs, block parties and second lines, the dance was central to "a historical situating of sissy bounce—bounce music as performed by artists from the New Orleans black-American community that [led to] a meteoric rise in popularity post-[Hurricane Katrina after 2005]." In the 1990s, twerking had widespread appeal in black party culture throughout the hip-hop/rap region known as The Dirty South, including New Orleans, Houston, Memphis, Charlotte, Virginia Beach, Miami, and Atlanta. In 2013, it became the top "what is" search on the Google search engine following pop artist Miley Cyrus performing the dance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Etymology

A 2013 Oxford Dictionaries blog post states, "the most likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to "work it".