This may finally be the year — even the week — when your mother asks what twerking is.
Or worse, your grandmother.
The booty-shaking dance has been around for decades, but it definitely seemed to reach its cultural apex with Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, during which former child star Miley Cyrus treated singer Robin Thicke’s crotch like a stripper pole.
The performance blew up Twitter, scandalized some, but, more than anything, reminded ladies that flesh-color vinyl bikinis probably aren’t the best idea.
Days after the VMAs, everybody was talking about Miley Cyrus, who stole the buzz from stars like Gaga with her twerk act. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Now, even supposedly highbrow news organizations are running headlines like, “Miley Cyrus’ twerking? It’s just not working.”
According to Google, searches for the term were flat until April 2011, when they began to rise slowly before exploding this year. This month represents the height of the search term’s popularity.
Before twerking’s inevitable oversaturation and implosion (officially scheduled for this Saturday at 4:28 p.m.), you probably have some questions — especially if you’re over the age of 35 and have never visited an Atlanta strip club.
So, what is it exactly?
Simply put, twerking involves bending at the waist while keeping the legs straight and shaking one’s backside.
“In the words of my friend Couture Maddness, it’s in the booty, not the back,” says Millisia White, artistic director of the New Orleans Society of Dance’s Baby Doll Ladies, a group that pays homage to traditional black-Creole culture.
Legend has it, twerking began in the Big Easy in the late 1980s or early 1990s. No one’s really sure, because it’s not exactly a subject that gets a lot of university research funding.
White says she first heard the term some 20 years ago at underground dances in New Orleans.
“You’d have the deejay call out a [sometimes nonsensical] word or phrase, and people would just interpret it,” White says. “He’d say, ‘Do the pork chop,’ or, ‘Do the Johnny,’ or, ‘Twerk for me.’ ”
The word could be a contraction of footwork. Or it could be a combination of “twist” and “jerk.” Or it could be just made up. We may never know for sure.
From the Big Easy, the craze traveled throughout the South, much as jazz had done decades earlier. It still had a long way to go before the 20-year-old daughter of a guy with a mullet would get involved, though.
In 1993, Louisiana’s DJ Jubilee released “Do the Jubilee All,” which had the artist rapping, “Twerk, baby! Twerk, twerk, twerk!” The video featured women shaking their rumps to the music — a staple of most every rap video since.
Atlanta rappers Ying Yang Twins put out “Whistle While You Twurk” in 2000. “Good Lord! Make it shake like a salt shaker!” went the lyrics. Usher had a 2001 hit with “Twork It Out,” proving that even the correct spelling of the term is up for grabs. In Germany, it’s probably spelled “twürke.”
Now things are really starting to cook. In June, rapper Cash Out released “The Twerk Song.” In July, Nicki Minaj and Busta Rhymes teamed up for the dancehall-ish “Twerk It.” On Aug. 22, another rapper named Juicy J even offered a $50,000 college scholarship on Twitter to the “best chick that can twerk.” He has since rescinded the promise, possibly because some angry women threatened a boycott.
Yesterday, a (oddly enough) male fan asked Kobe Bryant to record a twerking video and post it on Vine, to which the basketball star responded, “#notachanceinhell.”
And then there’s Miley. Her VMA performance raised some eyebrows mostly for its hypersexuality, but also because she was a white former Disney Channel star who was stealing something that has traditionally been associated with black culture.
“Miley seems to delight in dancing much like these strippers do,” wrote feminist Web site Jezebel. “But basically, she, as a rich white woman, is ‘playing’ at being a minority specifically from a lower socio-economic level.”
Not that everyone is calling for Miley’s head and thong.
“I have nothing negative to say about Miley and her translating our culture,” says White. “She’s expressing the highest level of freedom, and that’s what it’s all about.”
In fact, White says anyone is free to twerk, as long as it’s in the name of artistic expression. Just don’t get any ideas, Justin Bieber.
reed.tucker@nypost.com
The art of the twerk is simple, yet also easy to mess up. One wrong move, and you’re in dangerously out-of-fashion booty-pop territory (“the booty pop” — the act of simply pumping your bottom — is just one step of the twerk). Here’s how to stay safe.
1. Place your feet in a wide stance, with your toes angled out to 10 and 2.
2. To channel Miley, bend over at a 90-degree angle and arch your back. For a more authentic New Orleans style, stay vertical, squat and arch your back.
3. Using the hip bone as the point of axis, push your bottom out to a “popped” position and clench your cheeks. Thrust your hips down and under to a neutral position, then return to the popped position. Repeat rapidly. The range of motion should be relatively limited.
4. Lift your head up, stick out your tongue and lick your lips like there’s a hot fudge sundae sitting in front of you, or Robin Thicke gyrating behind you.
— Gregory E. Miller