Duck Dance

It's a fairly safe bet that most of you are familiar with this little piece of avian boogie.  If you've been to a wedding in the last couple of decades, for example, it's practically de rigueur.  You flap your elbows, bob up and down, and generally make a damn fool out of yourself to the sprightly tones of a polka ensemble.

What's that?  Chicken, you say?  Well, no, I'm generally brave enough to participate...  Oh, you mean it's called the Chicken Dance?  Well, sure... now.

You see, back in the 1970s, in Switzerland, one Werner Thomas (accordionist) composed what was called at the time "Der Ententanz," or, "The Duck Dance."  The route by which it switched birds is somewhat obscured, but there are two major perspectives.  One is that it simply shifted from "Duck" to "Bird" to "Chicken" as it meandered its way through various languages before reaching Stateside.  Plausible, but boring.

More exciting (but a trifle dubious) is the story that it was played during the 1981 Tulsa Oktoberfest, and one of the organizers managed to procure a chicken suit from a local television station (in the absence of a duck costume), and the suited dancer subsequently created moves that will live forever.