Grinding, freaking, and the latest move—twerking, which is bending over and bouncing your butt up and down—are dance moves that have all been banned at most of the schools in Anne Arundel County, Md., and I would imagine in other areas as well, the Capital Gazette reports.
I’m not really sure this qualifies as news, since adults have tried to stop almost every dance move kids have come up with for several generations now, calling them lewd, dirty, or some contemporary equivalent, and even suggesting that couples dancing, where males and females dance together, promotes promiscuity or tempts adultery.
But school officials in at least one school in the county have come up with a “dance contract” (PDF), to be signed by students who want to come to school dances and their parents. Rising to the threshold of news, the document spells out in no uncertain terms that the aforementioned dancing moves, which were fairly widespread even before Miley Cyrus did them on MTV, will get kids kicked out. It says, in part:
Sexually explicit dancing is defined as the following:
• Freaking, grinding, or any other dancing that can be construed as vulgar or provocative — including TWERKING …
It isn’t easy to find a definition of twerking, but the Oxford Online Dictionary had one: “to dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.” It might take a while for other dictionaries to catch up. Oxford lists the likely etymology as being probably an alteration of “work” as in “work it, girl; twerk it, girl!”
So, sports fans, there’s the latest attempt by adults to regulate teenage dancing, at least at school-sponsored functions. We reported last month on a story out of North Dakota in which students reportedly just left the dance to go to another site and dance as they felt like dancing.
Kids “didn’t want to follow the rules, so they left,” the principal at the school was quoted as saying. “Our kids, when they left here, I can say, it was respectful, too. They just all walked out, there were no verbal exchanges.”
And that would appear to be the only choice school officials are giving kids here: Either dance the way the adults want you to dance or don’t come to the homecoming dance. But if you do decide to leave the dance, please do so respectfully, without any verbal exchanges. School officials are doing exactly the same thing school officials have done since before your grandparents were born, even though there was no twerking in those days.
