History

Rock 'n' Roll music came into being in the early 1950s. It resulted from a combination of rhythm 'n' blues music of the American black culture with the folk song styling of the southern white hill country population - a style once called hillbilly.

"Sh-Boom" (1954) and "Rock Around the Clock" (1955) were the first two rock 'n' roll recordings to achieve overwhelming success throughout the United States.

The new music did not intrude extensively on the dance scene until 1960 when a young black TV entertainer billed as Chubby Checkers (real name, Ernest Evans, Jr.) introduced a gyrating, twisting, free-style dance he termed the twist. Almost instantly, dancers who had been searching for a dance to fit the new rhythm realized that the twist was "it".

Nowadays we teach rock and roll as a great form of partner dancing from the simple jive to the energetic rock and roll incorporating a serious of death defying lifts. It is an enjoyable dance style to the worlds most popular music style.