Focus On Dance: Waacking

The Waacking style of street dance traces its roots back to gay and nightclub cultures. In the United States, at gay nightclubs, male performers dressed as women and performed to female songs on stage. Movements of the performers were so creative that it was only a matter of time before Waacking made its way into mainstream nightclubs as a way of the dancefloor, and earned its approval amongst other sexualities, especially in the straight community. Waacking evolved prior to house music's popularity and is considered a house dance since it was popular amongst nightclubs (also known as houses).

Disco music was the perfect vehicle for Waacking, with its driving rhythms and hard beats.

In the early 1970s in Los Angeles, dancer Lamont Peterson was one of the first to start using his arms and body to the music. Dancers such as Mickey Lord, Tyrone Proctor and Blinky fine tuned the arms movements, by making the arms and hands go fast to the driving disco beat. During the mid 1970s club dancers Tinker, Arthur, Andrew, Lonnie Carbajal, Michael Angelo, Billy Starr, Billy Goodson, and Danny Logo took center stage with other dancers, perfecting those synchronized syncopated movements.

At the time Waacking was primarily a gay Black and Latino dance. Many people mistakenly believe that “Waacking” came from “Locking” because some of the movements are very similar. The gay and transvestite community largely contributed to the oldskool waacking forms. Waacking and Locking do have some similarities but they are different dances. Punkin' is the original name of the dance. Waacking is a name set forth by the non-gay community that mixed in movements from locking. Some Locking style dance instructors eventually started to teach Punkin' and newskool Waacking classes also. Many new dancers assumed that it was part of the Locking style.

The name “Waacking “originated from The Soul Train Dancer Tyrone Proctor and Jeffrey Daniel's of the Outrageous Waack Dancer's in 1972 themselves (Because of the thrusting of the arms). “Garbo” is another name given to the dance by Andrew because of the posing he did (like the pictures of the glamour women of the 40’s) Arthur, Andrew and Tinker danced sometime on Soul Train. While working with Toni Basil, (An Original Locker). Andrew, Arthur, Tinker, Lonnie, and Billy landed the Diana Ross show in Las Vegas.

The difference between “Waacking” and “Voguing” is “Waacking” became popular in the early 70’s on the West Coast. “Waacking” is mostly done to Disco Music. “Voguing” became popular in the late 70’s on the East Coast.”Voguing” is done to mostly House Music.

Over 35 years “Waacking” is still going strong with the help of dancers like Tyrone “The Bone” Proctor, Adolfo “Shabbadoo” Quninones, Jody Watley, Anna “Lollipop” Sanchez, Brian “Footwork”Green, Angel and Tyrone's Son Aus Spottedeagle aka Aus "Ninja" Omni, and Samara Lockerooo just to name a few. When the Gay Community moved on from “Waacking” these were some of the people who help keep this Dance form alive for more than 35 years.

Waacking and Glowsticking are the fundamental dance styles of which Tecktonik is based off. Tecktonik and Waacking are often ridiculed pejoratively by sexualists as being a gay dance, despite being danced by and having evolved amongst a vast variety of sexualities.