Origin of Tutting - Part 2
You learnt about its inspiration. But what led to its origination as a dance?
As we all read in the previous blog on the origin of tutting, tutting was inspired from the ancient scriptures of Egypt.
In this blog we will read about the creator of tutting and the spread of the style in hip hop culture. In order to understand completely the history of tutting, one must also be familiar with popping.
After 1975, the year when Sam Solomon, aka Boogaloo Sam, created popping,
Sam set up a crew named The Electric Boogaloos.
Sam and the other EBs were pretty famous during the second half of the decade. Mark Benson, aka King Boogaloo Tut, was also a big fan of Sam. Before he met Sam, he already had trained himself in Boogaloo. After watching Sam popping, he trained himself in popping as well and learnt it. It was around 1976/77 when Mark got inspired by the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and created a different style of popping, which he named the king tut style of popping (now Tutting).
The hieroglyphics contain eight poses (tuts). Mark worked on different ways to transit from one tut to another. This style was fresh and of course very very cool. Mark himself has said that he created tutting in order to impress Boogaloo Sam, the leader and member of the Electric Boogaloos. You know, we all have that one idol who we want to notice us. Same thing here.
So, in ‘77 Tutting had been created. But how did it get popular and spread out of the Long Beach area?
Steve Martin, famous American actor, comedian and musician, released a single
named “King Tut” in the year “1978” in which he pays a tribute to Pharaoh
Tutakhamun. In “1979”, Steve performed King Tut dressed like an Egyptian and
dancing in a way similar to Tutting, during a segment of the famous TV show
Saturday Night Live.
You need to understand that he probably wasn’t aware of the Tutting style. He did it because his song was about Pharaoh Tutakhamun and also because it was funny. Have a look:
He wasn’t popping and never did he mention that he was Tuttin or he drew his inspiration from the King Tut style of popping. But that performance helped these poses reach to a greater audience.
By the beginning of the 80s, the style had begun to spread in the dancing
community. More and more poppers were now incorporating tutting in their
popping choreos. One such name is Steffan Clemente, aka Mr. Wiggles. He has
played an important role in the spread of the style.
Wiggles began tutting even before he met Mark or saw him dancing.
Mark says that if he hadn’t created tutting, Wiggles would have.
Wiggles added his own flavour to the already very cool style and made it look even cooler. Take a look at this footage:
After having learnt Tutting, he even taught tutting to people. He made DVDs of him teaching popping (and tutting) which helped the new and aspiring dancers of the 80s and 90s to learn popping and ultimately tutting as well.
Having said all that, there is only one person who must be given the credit for the creation of the style, and that is, Mark Benson. Every other person has surely helped in spreading the style but the creator remains one. Hope I was able to make the history of Tutting clear to you. Some not-very-important details have been omitted in order to maintain the length of the blog.
Author
Aakash Kar
Founder, ShapeYourSunday
Shape Your Sunday has an amazing podcast where we feature various dancers and strife to bring forward the stories of all the dancers and dance style and get all the dancers the respect & recognition they deserve whilst answering the question "Kya dancers paisa kama paa rahe hai?"
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