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The Electric (better known as The Electric Slide) is a four wall line dance. Choreographer and dancer Richard L. "Ric" Silver claims to have created the dance in 1976.
Dance popularity is sometimes attributed to its setting to Marcia Griffiths and Bunny Wailer's song "Electric Boogie", which was written and recorded for the first time in December 1982.
There are several variations of the dance. The original choreography has 22 steps, but variants include the Freeze (16-step), Cowboy Motion (24-step), Cowboy Boogie (24 step), and the Electric Slide 2 (18-step). The 18-step variation became popular in 1989 and for ten years was listed by Linedancer Magazine as the number-one dance in the world.
The original dance was choreographed to be danced in two lines facing each other and in the course the opposite dancers circle each other.
Controversy
In 2007, Silver filed DMCA-based take-down notices to YouTube users who posted videos of people performing the 18-step dance variation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis against Silver, asking the court to protect Machulis's free speech rights in recording a few steps of the dance in a documentary video posted to the Internet. On May 22, 2007, the EFF came to an agreement to settle the lawsuit: the settlement states that Silver will license the Electric Slide under a Creative Commons noncommercial license and to also post the new license on any of his current or future websites that mention the Electric Slide.
In recent decades, there has been some controversy regarding the creation year of the Electric Slide line dance. Silver claimed that he received a demo of the song 'Electric Boogie' in 1976, which he used to create his dance steps. However according to Marcia Griffiths, the song 'Electric Boogie' was written for her by Bunny Wailer in early 1980s.
References
- ^ LineDancer Magazine, June 2003, p. 9.
- "Marcia Griffiths – Today's 1 Hit Wonder @ 1 [VIDEO]". 18 February 2013.
- The Electric Slide Dance, American Songwriter
- 1976 – Bunny Wailer & Marcia Griffiths: Electric Boogie
- Silver, Ric. "This is 'The Electric' - The Complete Choreography". The-electricslidedance.com. Archived from the original on 2018-07-08. Retrieved 2016-11-30.
- "'Electric Slide' Creator Steps on Fair Use | Electronic Frontier Foundation". Eff.org. 2007-03-01. Retrieved 2012-08-29.
- "Electric Slide Creator Calls Off Online Take-down Campaign". EFF. 2007-05-22. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
- https://copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/The-Electric-Slide.pdf.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - Katz, David (2003). Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae (1st ed.). Bloomsbury. p. 335. ISBN 978-0747564027.
I got maybe about 700 dollars, and I invested in a keyboard in Canada - a rhythm box - and it was the greatest buy I've ever made, because it had every single sound on it. I took it in the studio with brother Bunny, and Bunny was fascinated with the same sound that I loved, which was the piano playing the repeater sound, "nenga-nenga-nenga-nenga," so that was what we put down first on tape, and then the rhythm, "boom, baff, boom, baff." Bunny is a talented songwriter, and one of the greatest producers I know. He took that home in the country, and the following morning he came back with the song "Electric Boogie." The song was released coming up to Christmas in 1982