Calling the true origins of anything can be a vague science. Shuffling emerged as early as the eighties at warehouse raves or even, if you think about it, the roaring twenties, with those lush flappers girls Charleston-stepping about the place like they didn't know the market was about to crash. It's a grey area. So let's instead look at when shufflers first popped up on the Internet as a ‘thing,' since youtube seems to be the… er… epicentre of the contemporary shufflers' scene anyhow…
It was first called the Melbourne Shuffle, and it was danced to terrible, terrible hardstyle music. The (then fringe) shuffler community didn't confine itself to actual raves, but practiced and recorded its craft in car parks and other inspirational spaces (this aspect has inexplicably endured). Traditional costuming included hoodie and nineties raver phat pants for guys; girls could wear this also, but were gently encouraged to wear the traditional female costume of midriff top, mega-tight hot pants and furry demi-flares.
Check them out here (the music makes me want to go on a stabbing spree, in a good way, I guess):
In 2006 the shuffle spread across Australia and was taken on board by many different dance music lovers, including arms-to-the-sky-and-close-your-eyes regular trance-heads and the cheesy electro massive in head-to-toe fluro with vests tied to their belts, as was the style at the time. A few years later this massive ‘fro and some other guy took shuffling to America and the world with ‘Every Day I'm Shuffling' wearing lycra and lens-less glasses, which was also the style at the time. This was a difficult period.
The shuffle re-appeared on the horizon in England last year and, inevitably, in Ibiza. It developed a hazardous chicken dance element (elbows bruise, you guys) and costuming was a little different, featuring loud buttoned up shirts, pulled up socks, bum bags and jaunty snap back caps. Nowadays, the problem with doing the shuffle is your shirt sleeves and shorts might unroll or your snapback might fall off and then you just look like someone's Dad from the 80s wearing sport socks to help with his tinea. So shuffling has its flaws: stubbed toes, bum bags etc., but the freaky thing about this resurgence is that this time around the backlash has grown with equal fervour and almost simultaneously as the trend itself - and it's getting ugly.
Let me clarify my position. I like to poke fun at people from the safety of the internet as much as the next anonymous columnist. I, better than most, fully understand the urge to tear down the latest craze with whatever literary weapons one can muster, ‘cause it's fun and they're annoying. All articles and websites sending up people who stomp about in their driveway are thoroughly entertaining and have my full support. But surely, when it comes to the real world, live and let live? Apparently not. Unofficially official shuffler bans have surfaced at clubs all over the UK manifesting in blatant signs, ruthless door policy and not so subtle hints printed on tickets.
My friends and I used to knock out these moves years ago and nobody seemed to mind. Our dancing styles have since progressed into something more highly evolved and sophisticated (gangnam) but if I felt like throwing a few stomp and glides into the mix would a posse of bouncers descend on me and drag me, jerking and scuffling to the exit? Will they start forcing anyone who dances like that to wear a snapback cap as a mark of identification, so the rest of the clubbing community can know who their enemies are? What the deuce is going on? This is dance music - we're supposed to be an inclusive community! We seem to have stuck our heads so far up our collective arse that we're turning our distaste for a certain style into an organised and officially sanctioned bullying movement within our precious rave scene.
These ambiguous reports of shufflers' anti social behaviour should not be used to illustrate the character of a whole group of dancers, even if they look like they carry a knife and dance like they're tripping over themselves (a bold combination). That's akin to the man in the suit saying all dance music loving kids are degenerate, drug-addled miscreants because a few guys get too cokey at a festival and punch a policeman in the face, or some girl double drops and dribbles vomit down her front while she tells BBC news her favourite band is Swedish House Mafia. These people are just douchebags who happen to like dance music. The guy that's knocking your drink and taking up all that space to shuffle is just a delinquent, who would probably be causing you as much grief if he was doing the salsa or waiting for the toilet.
Let's be patient and let this phase run its course. The next move to take over will probably be twerking, and whilst you wade through a sea of twitching bum cheeks on your way to the bar you'll be yearning for the days of the shuffle.
I showed this article to a friend before publishing and their comment so eloquently summarised the crux of my piece that I will use it to conclude:
“That being said, nobody likes them.”