Transcript
What’s up? My name is Matt Steffanina and today I’m going to talk to you guys about the history of the Melbourne Shuffle. The Melbourne Shuffle was actually created in the late 80’s and into the early 90’s and it’s a club and a rave dance. This dance was started in Melbourne, Australia, thus the term Melbourne Shuffle, and it was mostly done in underground clubs, real late at night, techno music, real hard electric music.
It’s evolved over the last couple of decades and been mixed with other styles like hip-hop, and even b-boy, to create what we know as the modern day shuffle. The basic step is called the T step, which involves taking your front foot and putting it in the center of your back foot and making a T, and then shuffling across the floor, side to side, or even front to back.
From the T step, some hip-hop dancers and some b-boys started to shuffle and started to incorporate the running man. The running man is an old school hip-hop move which has been adapted to fit with the shuffle. The biggest difference between a hip-hop running man and a shuffle running man is the groove. Hip-hop running man you’re hitting down and it’s a much more aggressive movement, whereas the shuffle, you’re hitting back and it’s a little bit softer.
A big reason for the shuffle’s popularity is because it’s a free-style dance. You can learn how to shuffle in an afternoon and go out to the club and start dancing right away. If you just know the few basic steps that you’re going to learn in these videos, you can go out and dance all night.
