Twist

Twist is the dance that made a whole generation roll their hips in wild circles, with or without a paltner. Never before had a rhythm kept America swinging in the same way. At a time when rock'n'roll was on its way out, the twist rapidly became a new international phenomenon. Through Ron Mann's documentary we are able to enjoy archival films and recent interviews with dancers and musicians who were there at the time. The trend setting musician Chubby Checker became a star overnight witluLcover of Hank Ballard's ''The Twist''. Both men are interviewed in this instructive dance movie.

COMMENTARY
Right now ''Generation X'' is on the agenda. Born of the baby boom generation they are called ''the ironic generation'', they are said to see through most things and dissociate themselves from previous generations. Their rejection is perceived as a mystery. The former president Bush is accusing the comic character Bart Simpson, one of the heroes of the X generation, for ''un-American behaviour''.
It is interesting how the present is always perceived as confusing, and how often one forgets to compare it with what came before.
Twist offers a comparison of the generation game. The film is put together by old journal and TV films as well as interviews with dancers, artists and choreographers. It revolves round the twist which, at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, became a craze bigger than most of what America and the rest of the world had ever seen.
The film begins in 1953. Musically the black and the white America move forward side by side, but they never meet. The whites are portrayed through stiff, very formal dances. The blacks are dancing in Harlem and in the street, rhythmical, with their hips. Presley represents the big cross-over, the first white hip roller. The black music becomes more and more dominating, in the white area as well. Hank Ballard writes ''dirty lyrics'' heavy with sexual innuendoes. ''The Twist'' is put on a B-side. Chubby Checker makes it a hit. He- is, unlike Ballard, a groomed and polished boy.
Twist becomes a fad in sophisticated circles. At The Peppermint Lounge in New York, Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne are crow· ded together with bikers and senators who arrive in limousines. The former president Eisenhower makes a statement in 1962:
''I have nothing against people who twist. But this is different. What happened to beauty, honesty and our sense of decency?''
The market forces tale over. Twist becomes big business, clothes, books, hairstyles, dolls, movies. Then it fades away. Everyone is waiting for the next thing. Lots of new dances arrive: The Fly, The Locomotion, Hully Gully, Mashed Potato, The Monkey. None of them comes near the luminosity of the twist. As a voice says towards the end of the movie: ''If you don't move your hips, nothing will happen''. Together with the fact that a different scenario takes place in the background: Dylan, Beatles, RoIling Stones. Vietnam. Another generation IS about to take over from the previous one. ':'
Åke Högman

Medverkande
Dokumentär: Producent
Ron Mann: Foto
Bob Fresco: Musik
Keith Elliot, Nicholas Stirling: Talat språk
English