People say that The Twist killed touch dancing. And that about 15 years later the Disco craze (with its signature Hustle dance) brought it back (for a while, at least). (More recently, Hip Hop, which is influencing what “freestyle” dancers do when there is a dance floor and rap music, may be killing touch dancing again.) According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the hottest song this summer is Get Lucky, from a pair of 40-year-old French guys called Daft Punk. Get Lucky has a solid disco beat, which ought to please dancers who still do, or can do, the Hustle. Since it took from the song’s release on April 19 until the July1 Businessweek issue, and Wilddancer hasn’t heard it yet on a dance floor, it may take more than this song to make Hustle popular again. Interestingly, though, was the purposely seductive way the song was introduced, which seems to have been initiated more by the musicians than the marketing folks at Columbia Records. Even more interesting to us, though, was that the marketers discovered that their audience wanted to participate in the launch, saying that they felt “We don’t want to be treated like consumers. We want to be treated like dance partners.” It remains to be seen how many of those (passive) listeners will become (active) dancers.
And another very recent boost to this disco theme occurs in the new (July 5, 2013) movie from popular Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, titled I’m So Excited, from the eponymous 1982 disco hit by the Pointer Sisters. Three gay flight attendants on this farcical “flight from Hell” do a dance routine to the song (which is unmistakably a Hustle tune, though on the slow side for Hustle dancers).
Hustle dancing’s heyday was marked by the Saturday Night Fever movie and jammed disco dance spots like Studio 54, and like many fads it declined dramatically over time as the “fever” subsided. But the dance itself is sexy, Hustle groups have stayed active around the USA, and there is an association (the International Hustle Dance Association). There is even an IHDA Bronze Hustle Manual written by Billy Fajardo, Jami Josephson, and DVIDA that has been accepted by the NDCA (National Dance Council of America). We understand that this manual serves as a syllabus to guide judges for competitions. Most of the other books on Hustle—including The Engineer’s Guide to Hustle Dancing—are a little long in the tooth, so the real proof that Hustle is being reborn would be publication of Silver and Gold level sibling manuals by the IHDA.