The Story Of Shuffle

What Is:

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The Melbourne Shuffle (also known as Rocking or simply The Shuffle) is a rave and club dance that originated in the late 1980s in the underground rave music scene in Melbourne, Australia. The basic movements in the dance are a fast heel-and-toe action with a style suitable for various types of electronic music. Some variants incorporate arm movements.^[1] People who dance the shuffle are often referred to as rockers, due in part to the popularity of shuffling to rock music in the early 1990s.

History:

Late 1980s–early 1990s

In the late ’80s, the Melbourne Shuffle began to emerge as a distinct dance, incorporating more hand movement than its predecessor, Stomping. The music genres originally danced to were House music and Acid house. As Trance music developed, so did the dance, with more accent laid on glide movements.

Where the Melbourne Shuffle was originally danced, the places were not considered to be named ‘raves’, but rather ‘dance parties.

Mid–late 1990s

A number of videos about the dance from this era exist as it increased in popularity. Many variations of this dance developed, but the main heel-to-toe movement remained the key motion, giving it the name “the Melbourne Shuffle”. Notably arm-movements are much more prevalent than in later renditions of the dance.

2000–2008

In 2004 a documentary titled Melbourne Shuffler began filming in Melbourne clubs, raves, festivals and outdoor events, before being released on DVD in 2005. By 2005, the Melbourne Shuffle had helped to change the sound of hardstyle and hard trance music, with DJs and producers aiming at a constant 140-160bpm speed. By 2006, early hardstyle was largely replaced by nustyle and epic trance -influenced hard trance music at popular shuffling clubs and raves. Nustyle and the newer form of hard trance focused on swung euphoric orchestral-like trance melodies that would suddenly drop (such as by a house exciter) into a constant kick drum that was of preferable speed for shuffling to by the rockers. In 2006 with the rising popularity of YouTube, dancers internationally now contribute to the Shuffle online, posting their own variations and learning from others. As more people have practiced the dance, the dance itself has changed from the majority of hand movements over feet movements, to present day, where it is mostly based on keeping in time with bass beats.

2009

In early to mid-2009 the infectious popularity of the Melbourne Shuffle on YouTube began to calm, but not die, bringing on a new age of shufflers. The dance began to revert to what some people call “Oldschool”. This reversion of shuffling consisted mostly of wide variations of the “T-Step” and minimal running man, and is accented by glides and spins. Although this may be referred to as “Oldschool” this new age of style is still very different from the way rockers in the ’90s danced. Many of the new wave of rockers perform in cypher. Some of the younger people of this new wave are referred to as teeny boppers (or ‘TB(s)’ for short). TBs are also generally described as being young people that are not old enough to attend raves, so they dance at school, in a street or in a park instead. Whereas individuals who participate in those aspects of the dance argue that enough of the current Shuffle scene is influenced by Hip Hop (such as the now widespread inclusion of the ‘Running Man’) that these activities are justified.