Shimmy
{{Short description|Type of dance}}
{{About|the dance move}}
File:Sheet music cover - EV'RYBODY SHIMMIES NOW (1918).jpg
File:The Chorus Girl's Romance (1920) - Alamo Theater, Atlanta, Georgia.jpg with separately mounted shoulders and a mechanism to do a shimmy for the film The Chorus Girl's Romance (1920), the chief of police ordered the mechanism turned off.{{cite journal |title=Shimmying Cutout Draws Atlanta Police Interference |journal=Exhibitors Herald |volume=11 |issue=24 |page=54 |publisher=Exhibitors Herald Company |location=New York City |date=December 11, 1920 |url=https://archive.org/details/exhibitorsherald11exhi_1}}]]
A shimmy is a dance move in which the body is held still, except for the shoulders, which are quickly alternated back and forth. When the right shoulder goes back, the left one comes forward.
History
In 1917, a dance-song titled "Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble" by Spencer Williams was published, as "The Jazz Dance", which included the "Shimmy-She", among others.
Gilda Gray attributed to American Indians in a 1919 interview with Variety saying "You may not believe it but the original shimmy dance has never been properly introduced in New York. I know, for I have studied the dancing characteristics of the Indians for a long time, and they are really responsible for the shimmy which they labelled the 'Shima Shiwa'. There have been continual efforts on the part of this dancer and that one, with each declaring that his or her version is the 'original.' There is no doubt but that the shimmy dance as it was constructed by the American Indian would have a greater popularity if done right."
"I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" was an up-tempo jazz dance song, written by Clarence Williams and Armand Piron, and published in 1919 which has been popular ever since and performed and recorded by many artists. {{According to whom|date=May 2019}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjTJWediME4|title=Original Memphis Five - I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate|date=11 September 1922|publisher=YouTube|access-date=November 6, 2015}}
Flappers often performed the dance in the 1920s. The origin of the name is often falsely attributed to Gilda Gray, a Polish emigrant to America. An anecdote says that when she was asked about her dancing style, she answered, in heavy accent, "I'm shaking my chemise". In an interview Gilda denied having said this, and earlier usages of the word are recorded. In the late 1910s, others were also attributed as being the "inventor" of the shimmy, including Hilda Ferguson, Bee Palmer and the jazz duo Frank Hale and Signe Paterson.{{Cite book|last=Levitt|first=Paul M.|title=My Life in Vaudeville: The Autobiography of Ed Lowry|publisher=Southern Illinois University Press|year=2011|isbn=978-0-8093-3016-4|location=Library of Congress|pages=201}} Mae West, in her autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, claimed to have re-titled the "Shimmy-Shawobble" as the Shimmy, after seeing the moves in some black nightclubs.{{Citation needed|date=May 2016}}
The dance was often considered to be obscene and was frequently banned from American dance halls during the 1920s.{{Cite web|url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcemYjTdvZ8&index=8&list=RDPjTJWediME4|title = The Roaring Twenties - Dancing The Shimmy|date = 1920s|publisher = YouTube|quote = Press reports on banning at 0:55 and 1:16}}
The move is also known in Gypsy dances, done by gypsy female dancers to produce a chime of costume decorations made of the sewn-on coins.{{Citation needed|date=May 2016}}
In the early 1960s, several dance songs featuring the Shimmy became hits, including Bobby Freeman's "Shimmy, Shimmy", the Olympics' "Shimmy Like Kate", and Little Anthony & the Imperials' "Shimmy Shimmy Ko-ko Bop".
References
{{reflist}}
Sources
- "Vaudeville Volleys," Variety, July 8, 1919, p. 1055.
External links
{{commons category|Shimmy}}
- [http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3shimy.htm Shimmy] at "Dance History Archives"
- {{YouTube|E4YPPKlBaUA|An Eastern Westerner (1920)}}, in first 2 minutes of film Harold Lloyd is ejected from a "no shimmying" club
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