Quora Question: How did polka dancing originate?

Incredible as it may seem, someone wants an answer to this one.  So I provided one, and the real question is, one what?

My contribution will likely be deleted in a few minutes, but one never knows.  Keep reading for the truth about Polka.




From the folks at Quora: How did polka dancing originate?

All dancing is driven by musicians and music. If you don’t believe me, try doing the Bunny Hop  next time the orchestra plays Edelweiss at 84 beats per minute (BPM).

In Bohemia, in the 1850s, the local party-hearty crowd had a bad case of the shorts. While any number and variety of annoying deeds were done by the boheems due to the shortage of long green, the one group that should never get the short end of the stick got it, and that stick was shorter than a Democrat’s wedding tackle.

So they retaliated.

It took the musicians four days to come up with a dozen polka songs, and an hour and a half to invent the dance to go with the music. This is not as easy as it might seem, as they needed a lively dance that would cause everyone to sweat buckets in twenty minutes, plus it had to look like fun so all the women would want to dance. It also had to be simple enough so that the average man could learn to do it, (and here’s the true malicious genius of their revenge) but that the average untutored man would look dumber than his brother-in-law holding a hammer when his wife dragged him out to the dance floor - after three or four beers.

The name of the nefarious dance is Polka, and it’s still with us, and it’s still effective. Don’t believe me? Just drag you non-dancing fatheaded husband onto the floor and tell him to dance the polka with you. It’s easy - just look at my brother Fred dancing with his wife!

And that’s how Polka was invented.