The Electric Slide - Know your copy/right/left…

That’s right the “Electric Slide” not the “Candy Dance”.

A New Year is now well on it’s way and I have held back on this subject for as long as I could but watching the “The Best Man” has provoked me into sharing my thoughts. I do not want to hinder the autonomous bodies that descend upon many a dance floor but instead would like to add value (literally) to social dancing.

Year after year I watch people of different ethnicity, age, social status and beliefs perform the numerous steps of the sequence that I know to be the “Electric Slide” but to many the “Candy Dance”.

Firstly we should be totally in agreement here, that if it were not for these dance steps, many a party, dance or rave would never get started. The hot flurry that comes over each individual when you know you have a maximum of 8 bars to find enough room, to workout which way we are all going to face, to decide if we are going right/ right/ left/ left before we get into the tricky bit.  The bass of the guitar hits you right in the pit of your stomach, the snare and what maybe a xylophone or cowbells (who knows) all tamper with your cerebral cortex.

Then it happens “Yeaaaaaaah ee yeah, oooooooh” ............................, 5, 6, 7, 8.

But oh no!  If my memory serves me correct which it does, this “Candy” song is not the original song for this dance. Waaaaaay back when I was youngish the song I danced to echoed the name of the dance. Marcia Griffiths one of the I Threes, also a backing vocalist group of the late Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Recorded the song “Electric Boogie” which accompanied the dance in a live performance in 1976. The dance steps/sequence are copy written! So every time you’ve seen it and you know you’ve seen it but here it is in black and white. Someone is getting paid…

http://the-electricslidedance.com/id2.html

If it were not for this dance I cannot imagine what at least half of us would be doing and want to take a minute to big up Richard “Ric” Silver” choreographer/ originator of the “Electric Slide”.

and

Until such time,

Yassmin V