A shimmy is a dance move

Dance move

Dance moves or dance steps are the building blocks of many dances.More complex dance moves are called dance patterns, dance figures or dance variations....

 in which the body

Body

With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...

 is held still, except for the shoulder

Shoulder

The human shoulder is made up of three bones: the clavicle , the scapula , and the humerus as well as associated muscles, ligaments and tendons. The articulations between the bones of the shoulder make up the shoulder joints. The major joint of the shoulder is the glenohumeral joint, which...

s, which are alternated back and forth. When the right shoulder goes back, the left one comes forward. It may help to hold the arms out slightly bent at the elbow, and when the shoulders are moved, keep the hand

Hand

A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered extremity located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs...

s in the same position. In 1917, a dance-song titled "Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble" by Spencer Williams

Spencer Williams

Spencer Williams was an American jazz and popular music composer, pianist, and singer. He is best known for his hit songs "Basin Street Blues", "I Ain't Got Nobody", "Royal Garden Blues", "I've Found a New Baby", "Everybody Loves My Baby", "Tishomingo Blues", "Careless Love", and many...

 was published, as was "The Jazz Dance, which included the "Shimmy-She", among others. Flapper

Flapper

Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...

s often performed the dance in the 1920s. The origin of the name is often attributed to Gilda Gray

Gilda Gray

Gilda Gray was a Polish born American actress and dancer who became famous in the US for popularizing a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions....

, a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 emigrant to America. An anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

 says that when she was asked about her dancing style, she answered, in heavy accent, "I'm shaking my chemise

Chemise

The term chemise or shift can refer to the classic smock, or else can refer to certain modern types of women's undergarments and dresses...

". However, 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 Bee Palmer

Bee Palmer

Bee Palmer , was a United States singer and dancer. She was born Beatrice C. Palmer in Chicago.Palmer first attracted significant attention as one of the first exponents of the "shimmy" dance in the late 1910s...

. Mae West

Mae West

Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....

, in her autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, claimed to have retitled the "Shimmy-Shawobble" as the Shimmy herself, after seeing the moves in some black nightclubs.

The move is also known under different names in various folk dances, in Gypsy dances. In Russian this move is called "Tsyganochka", or "gypsy girl", and is done by gypsy female dancers to produce a chime of costume decorations made of the sewn-on coins.

The dance move with this name is used in various modern dances.

The shimmy is also a class of belly dance

Belly dance

Belly dance or Bellydance is a "Western"-coined name for a traditional "Middle Eastern" dance, especially raqs sharqi . It is sometimes also called Middle Eastern dance or Arabic dance in the West, or by the Greco-Turkish term çiftetelli...

moves. Depending on the desired effect, style, teacher, and country of origin of the particular dance, a shimmy might be executed differently, but altogether, the shimmy will manifest as a fast shaking or shuddering movement that can be rhythmic or arrhythmic. The movement may be localized, such as in the hips, shoulder, chest, etc., or the move might be loose and general, reverberating through the entire body. Shimmies in belly dance can also have orientation, such as an up/down movement or a twisting movement of the hips.

External links

• Shimmy at "Dance History Archives"