Twerkology : How I Learned To Twerk In 3-Minutes

Though twerking has been around for twenty years, ever since Miley Cyrus busted out her dance moves during the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, the craze has been bigger than ever. This dance move for women is all about shaking your booty and accentuating the movement of your hips and body. Some people think twerking is fun, funny, or just downright weird, but it has certainly become part of the dance culture today. Get in step with the newest trend and learn several ways to twerk by starting with Step 1 of your preferred method.

To clarify, twerking is the shaking of the hips and bottom in a twist/ jerk like fashion. Although, there’s no clear origin on how twerking came about, in 2005, a pair of young African American women from Atlanta, GA, uploaded videos on Youtube, “twerking” to popular hip-hop and down south club music. The women were dubbed the “Twerk Team” for their expert knowledge of the dance.

In recent years, “twerking” has started a cult following and even is name-dropped in a few club hits. On the 2011 song, “Round of Applause,” ATL rapper Waka Flocka Flame and Drake solicit a woman to “bounce that ass, shake that ass like the Twerk Team In a more subtle way, rapper French Montana asks “what you twerkin’ with?” on his hit, “Pop That.” Fellow ATL rapper, Lady (real name Shameka Brown) provides a female perspective to twerking in her song, aptly titled “Twerk.” With lyrics such as “he like it when I make that ass vibrate (twerk),” Lady uses the power of her twerk to command the boys in her yard, or in this case, the dance floor. Furthermore, she drops the word a whopping 75 times in the song.

It has even trickled down to modern slanguage. For example, I use the word “twerk” in every day vernacular, aside from its gyrating connotation. I use it as a verb: “Naw, I’m not twerking with that. (Translation: I’m not going to do that. It doesn’t sit well with me). Or as an adjective, “She’s walking twerkingly!” (Translation: There’s an extra pep in her step!) In many cases, I use it as a noun and say simply: “I’m going to twerk tonight!” (Translation: I’m going to have a good time this evening).