If you can flap your arms — you can do “The Chicken Dance.”
The swingy, polka-like tune is popular at parties, wedding receptions, bar and bat mitzvahs, and Octoberfests.
No need to get your feathers ruffled: Just think beak, wings, tail, chap, swing.
The song was written in the late Swiss accordion Werner Thomas. He tended flock of ducks and geese and originally named it "Der Ententanz" (The Duck Dance.) Thomas began performing his song in Davos, Switzerland, and the song eventually migrated into the United States, according to oldworld.ws/chickenhistory.html
New York publisher Stanley Mills snagged the U.S. publishing rights sometime in the 1970s — changed the song's name to "Dance Little Bird" and commissioned English lyrics: "Hey, you're in the swing/You're cluckin' like a bird (pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck)/You're flappin' your wings/Don't you feel absurd."
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The name and words never caught on, but the song and resulting dance steps stuck.
“As it became a staple of the dance-party circuit, the "Chicken Dance" also feathered Mills' nest,” says oldworld.ws/chickenhistory.html
By the late 1990s, Mills was licensing the tune for use on dance compilation CDs, karaoke collections and TV commercials for Burger King and others. Ted Kryczko, vice president for product development at Walt Disney Records put the tune into a kids' collection. In the Disney version, Minnie Mouse demonstrates the dance's finer points.
Get ready do to the chicken dance:
- As the music begins, think beak and pinch your fingers and thumbs together in front of your chest four times.
- Then think wings. Put your hands in your armpits and flap four times.
- Now think tail feathers and wiggle side to side four times. Get as low to the ground as you can.
- Clap 4 times.
- Now think swing. Repeat the previous steps until the the swing-like music, begins and then swing with your partner, a group or by yourself.
To help you get started, we've posted the "The Chicken Dance," performed by dancer and former Mouseketeer Bobby Burgess, the son-in-law of the late accordionist Myron Floren, both of whom were performers on "The Lawrence Welk Show." Burgess walks you through the steps and Floren provides musical accompaniment.
Let your inner geek fly with "Star Trek's" George Takei leading a mass chicken dance at an annual Cincinnati festival. We also included a handful of videos that we posted earlier this month in honor of National Chicken Dance Day, which was May 14. (No kidding.)
Remember: Beak, wings, tail feathers, clap, swing and you'll be flying, er, dancing.
