http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-01/19/029l-011999-idx.html
The Stampede After the Booty Call
Washington's Latest Line Dance Craze Is Gaining From Behind
By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 1999; Page C01
Can the ladies make a booty call? Yes they do!
Do they ever.
Things are moving along steadily at the Masonic Temple at 10th and U streets NW, where
on a recent Saturday night middle-aged African American couples dressed in their best
have been drifting in since about 10 o'clock. Stationed at one end of the dance floor
in the big balloon-festooned hall, Disco Bird (a k a Warren Washington) has been
getting them moving to the smooth sounds of Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson. Close
to midnight, however, he slips in his "Booty Call" CD, and the floor is suddenly thick
with bodies moving in unison.
The Booty Call is a frankly suggestive line dance that has kicked the Macarena
squarely in the behind. Instead of the coy arm and wrist positions of that short-lived
Latin-inspired dance, the Booty Call focuses on what's below the waist. It starts with
a walk, has steps going forward and back, and some crisscrossing of the feet, but
really, the secret of the Booty Call is in the booty -- the butt, the hips -- and how
much shake you can give them.
And at this well-attended party sponsored by the Charles Datcher Lodge No. 15, there's
no stopping the shaking. The floor is choked with people in their forties and fifties
bumping and grinding within inches of one another, in time with the insistent, raspy
thump of the music. Young women in micro-minis or snug slacks and slashing necklines
have popped up out of nowhere to ring the edges, where they have the most room for
their gyrations.
Booty booty booty call!
"They won't stop," marvels Bird, who has played through his longest remix of the song
and the instrumental version and has plugged in another beat, but still the floor
throbs with folks moving through the Booty Call steps. "They'll just keep on doing the
Booty Call no matter what I put on."
Why?
You need to ask?
"The shake," says Kathy McCall of Northeast Washington, laughing with cherry-red
fingernails held to her lips. "That's definitely what I like."
McCall is a grandmother of four. That she is sharing the dance floor with twenty- and
thirty-somethings in a dance of amorous abandon set to a driving '90s beat is the
mystery and the miracle of the Booty Call. Like the Electric Slide before it, the
Booty Call is firmly rooted in the black community, though it's slowly crossing over.
It made its first appearance in local nightclubs about a year ago and was picked up by
the more mature "oldies but goodies" crowd, who tend to favor line dances. Such dances
are more structured than freestyle dancing but, unlike hand dancing or swing, they
don't require a partner.
The Booty Call's popularity is spotty but growing. It brings patrons to their feet at
upscale establishments like the Coach and Four at 14th and U streets NW -- though just
down U Street at Republic Gardens it's completely unknown. The Chateau, which caters
to an over-30 crowd on Benning Road NE, gets jumping nightly with the Booty Call, as
does the Eclipse on Bladensburg Road NE.
Not to be outdone, suburban clubs have their own devotees: Tradewinds and Classics,
both on Allentown Road in Camp Springs, Md., report that their deejays play the Booty
Call several times a night.
The dance had folks shaking at Christmas parties, is all the rage at weddings and
reunions, and heats up private parties like the one held by the Masons. The song
itself is out on a CD single from So Real Productions and gets heavy requests at local
record shops like Roadhouse Oldies in Silver Spring.
It is perhaps the first instance of grandparents passing a hot new trend down to their
hip grandkids.
"The senior citizen community had the dance first," says Scooter Magruder, who manages
Roadhouse Oldies. "It's big on the hand-dance scene, where you might have 80 women
show up and only 30 guys. Those women have to wait a long time for the guys to get
around to them. You put on the Booty Call and they're all dancing."
Just what is a "booty call"? You're lonely. You're, shall we say, romantically
inclined. You're thinking of that special someone; you pick up the phone and make . .
. a booty call. (Is the implication lost on the older set? Don't bet on it.)
As with most trends, the origins of the Booty Call are murky. The term itself got a
boost two years ago from a movie of the same name. As for the dance, general consensus
says it came to the area by way of Baltimore. Folks up there were doing the dance a
few years back to two different songs released on 12-inch recordings to deejay pools.
By the time local deejays got wind of the dance -- this happened two or three years
after the recordings' original release, an eternity in the music business -- the songs
were no longer available from the record labels.
The pack rats among the local deejays came out on top of the tide.
"Deejays were looking all over town" for the cuts, says Gregory Gray, also known as DJ
Money, who regularly mixes music at the Coach and Four, among other nightspots. "All
they had to do was look in their old record collections. I had to tear my house up to
find it."
A local deejay remixed the songs and distributed them to colleagues; the tunes were
played for a time on WPFW-FM and Magic 102.3 (WMMJ-FM). Oldies-but-goodies deejays
like Bird spread the word to their colleagues about this next new thing.
The Booty Call is part of a long tradition of line dances, extending back to the '50s
with the Soul City Walk, the Philly Freeze and the Stroll. Each decade has brought its
own variety, and few have lasted beyond a few years of novelty. The Electric Slide of
the '80s went nationwide and is still popular in some clubs. But most have gone the
way of the briefly contagious Macarena.
Yet line dances remain the quiet stalwarts of the club scene. Only the well trained
and reasonably coordinated can handle the showy complications of hand dancing, swing
dancing or Latin dancing -- and that assumes there are enough partners. But line
dances require virtually no talent. All the preparation you need is to align yourself
behind someone who knows the steps. Every deejay knows that you put on a line dance
and you're pretty much guaranteed to fill the dance floor.
Wander into the Coach and Four in the lobby level of the Reeves Center at 2000 14th
St. NW, and most likely owner Warren Williams (fondly known as W.W.) will greet you at
the door. Just past the central, circular bar lies the dance floor, where under the
swirling lights of a mirrored ball one recent icy evening, happy-hour regulars still
in office attire are doing the Booty Call.
Ruth Mathis, a trim, handsome woman in a pumpkin-colored suit who hails from Fort
Washington, pulls a reporter along, coaching her through the steps.
"Jump up. Shake on the right -- shake it! Shake! Now shake on the left. Crisscross to
the right. Do it again. Slide back. Step to the left. That's it. Now jump up again."
Simple enough. It takes the length of the song for the stumble-footed reporter to
untangle her feet, and she never did get the shake down. But the appeal is clear. It's
the wiggle, the shimmy, the sway. Add your own style -- stiff and jerky or
honey-smooth. It's a license to flirt shamelessly and harmlessly, to show what you've
got and celebrate it.
After the dance, the women return to their tables. A group of them, all employees of
Industrial Bank upstairs, sip glasses of zinfandel as they mull over the merits of the
Booty Call.
"It gets you to move a little more than you usually would," says Hyattsville resident
Vicky Gaines. "You do get a workout." She pauses, then adds, "But I've always wondered
why they call it the Booty Call."
" 'Cause you shake your hips," says Lawann Smith of Northwest, giving her friend a
nudge. "You know how they say, 'Bend over when you do it, get all into it,'?" she
adds, shimmying her ample shoulders to illustrate.
It's that outright sexiness -- the life-affirming, caution-to-the-winds high spirit, a
chance to lose yourself in the vigorous beat and mass exuberance -- that's key.
"They all get out there, and they shake their little butt," says Bird. "It's the
freedom to do it and hear a song at the same time, and get away with it without
someone saying, 'Oh, you're being nasty.' "
The Booty Call
Here's a step-by-step guide:
1 Walk 4 steps to the right (optional shake)
2 Walk 4 steps to the left (optional shake)
3 Walk backward 2 steps (big shake!)
4 Jump up with feet together
5 Step forward with the right foot and add some shakes
6 Step forward with the left foot and add some more shakes
7 Step to the right, crossing left foot over right
8 With feet crossed, pivot on quarter turn to right and start again.
SOURCE: KRT Graphics
