This article from Jan. 3 is the third repost of notable 2014 content, based on readership and editors’ choices. The Top 10 series runs through Dec. 31. See links to previous installments at the end.
The moves are known as "the Jit" and they originated here in the 1970s.
The popular dance was created by three brothers and is the subject of a documentary by Haleem Rasul called "The Jitterbugs: Pioneers of the Jit," reports WBUR public radio in Boston. Rasul founded the HardCore Detroit dance company.
The film is scheduled to be shown May 23 at the Detroit Film Theatre in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
A scene from the documentary screened in May at the Detroit Film Theatre.
The Massachusetts station's Here & Now site reports:
Three brothers started the dance in Detroit in the 1970s, they became known as the “Jitterbugs,” doing flips and kicks alongside each other in coordinated routines.
One of the brothers, Tracey McGhee, told Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti that it started as a dance among “gangsters.”
“Back then we were criminals, sometimes we’d get out of the cars and start dancing, then it evolved to basement parties,” he said.
Eventually, the originators got jobs dancing at auto shows, the station reports.
-- Allan Lengel
2014 recap countdown so far
10. ’Ballsy’_Cadillac_Ad_During_Oscars_Stirs_Debate_About_its_Politics, March 2
9. Dan Gilbert’s Graffiti_’Degenerates’ Identified_as_Grosse_Pointe_Teens, July 1
