ET phoned home, the median salary was just under $16,000 (USD), and minivans, video recorders (VCRs), and cable television were modern concepts. The 1980s were a decade of spending, and the new cable music channel, MTV, inspired both the music and fashion world. Madonna and Michael Jackson were huge pop stars and, along with other influences, spurred some popular dance styles.
Break dancing was by far the biggest dance craze of the early 80s. Beginning as a 1970s street dance and evolving into a popular style of its own, break dancing was born out of hip-hop influences and required immense physical aptitude to execute most of the movements. Break dancing often involved moments of standoff between the dancers to see who could outdo the other.
Another dance craze, if you can call it that, was slamdance. Gaining momentum largely due to the development of new age punk and heavy metal in the 1980s, slamdance, also known as moshing, is nothing more than a group of people bumping into each other and jumping to the sound of loud metal music. The mosh pit followed, and major music concerts ever since have had a venue where fans mob each other in the guise of a dance. Whether it’s fun or dangerous is debatable, but mosh pit slamdance looks set to stay.
Almost anyone who attended a wedding reception in the late 1980s will remember hearing the “Electric Boogie” booming across the room and a solid line of people performing The Electric Slide. This dance craze was made more popular by the 1989 re-release of “Electric Boogie”, copyrighted in 1982 by Bunny Wailer.
Although the 1980s brought an amalgam of dance moves and styles, many of which have been forgotten, there’s no question that MTV played a large part in what became popular. Whether it was MC Hammer’s “Hammertime” or Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”, videos of musicians singing and dancing were available in people’s living rooms around the clock.
One last popular dance of the 1980s, and possibly the one that came out in the new decade, was the Lambada. Though it has long-standing Brazilian roots, Lambada gained worldwide popularity at the end of the decade with the release of the Hollywood film of the same name. The Lambada is considered to be a very sensual dance, even though it is fast and hot.
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