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Price:
$40*
Venue:
South Shore Room
Reservations:
800-786-8208
Online Reservations:
Purchase Tickets Online
You pick up the phone and it's doing the Alexander Graham Bell. Flick on a light and it's doing the Thomas Edison. Ride in your car with its V8 engine and you're doing the Henry Ford. Watch animated cartoons and it's doing the Walt Disney. Like these inspired inventors who are synonymous with their inventions, when you're "dancing apart to the beat," you're doing the Chubby Checker. History was in the making in November 1959 when the revolutionary concept of "dancing apart to the beat" was premiered to the vast teen-age audience of American Bandstand.
Adolescents jumped on the bandwagon, unselfconsciously imitating Checker and his freeform, expressive, dancing-without-a-partner movements that let it all hang out. From November 1959 to October 1963 as Checker's moves begot more moves, his Twist, Pony, Fly and Shake became the most popular form of social dancing. This is huge, for prior to the mania he created, dancing was staid and subdued, requiring partners to hold or touch each other.
Checker's "dancing apart to the beat" unequivocally proves that you don't have to wait for a partner to let loose on the dance floor and have fun. No wonder it became an overnight sensation, getting showcased from the White House to the Peppermint Lounge, its moves adapted for disco as well as aerobics, funk, break-dancing and hip hop amongst others.
The advent of Chubby Checker turned dancing cheek to cheek into a dance form about as dead as the minuet and made "dancing apart to the beat" de rigeur. Let's remember that even those unfortunates who are too young to have first-hand experience with Checker-mania know this man by injection. Because "doing the Chubby Checker" is dance as they know it and do it -- an offshoot of just four freeform dances and their corresponding arm movements that Checker, single-handedly, introduced to the world, making him a world-class mover and shaker.
His worldwide tours have audiences of all ages dancing in the aisles. This forty-year bite of history and pop culture is significant and far-reaching because it's never-ending. " I don't want you kids to think that you've found something new," Checker says. "The mold is renewed every time you dance apart to the beat…everybody does it to everybody's music.
Before Chubby Checker, it wasn't here." Now is the right time to give credit where credit is due. As we ring out the old century and ring in the new, "doing the Chubby Checker" and "dancing apart to the beat are and will remain givens in our lives, a solid bridge from decades past to the fast-approaching twenty-first century.
*Plus taxes and ticketing fees
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