Dance Trivia
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This dancing trivia quiz has 179 free questions with answers and covers every corner of the dance floor. There are the ballroom and Latin classics (waltz, tango, foxtrot, cha-cha, salsa, merengue, samba), the ballet canon (Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, the Ballets Russes, Nureyev, Misty Copeland), the crazes that swept the world (the Charleston, the twist, the Lindy Hop, the Macarena, the moonwalk) and the traditional forms from Hawaiian hula and Maori haka to flamenco, Bharatanatyam and Irish stepdance. It also takes in dance on screen and stage: Dirty Dancing, Saturday Night Fever, Fred Astaire, Riverdance, Dancing with the Stars and Strictly Come Dancing, plus oddities like the dancing plague of 1518 and breaking's debut at the Paris Olympics. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has been to a wedding, and the rest get progressively harder for dancers, teachers and pub-quiz regulars. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source, and each question shows the page that confirms it.
30 of 179 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which partner dance was born in the 1880s in port areas along the Río de la Plata?
Tango
The tango grew up in the 1880s in the port districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo; Argentina and Uruguay jointly had it inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.
Q 02Ballet originated during the Renaissance of the fifteenth century in which country?
Italy
Ballet began in Italy, in the lavish court spectacles of 15th-century Renaissance princes; it was later refined in France and Russia, which is why its step vocabulary is French.
Q 03The waltz is danced in which time signature?
3/4
The waltz is in 3/4 time, one strong beat followed by two lighter ones per bar. The name comes from the German walzen, to roll or turn, and the close hold scandalised polite society around 1800.
Q 04Which singer made the moonwalk famous during "Billie Jean" on Motown 25 in 1983?
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson performed the moonwalk during Billie Jean on the Motown 25 special in 1983. The glide itself was decades old; Marcel Marceau had mimed a version he called walking against the wind.
Q 05Breaking (breakdancing) made its debut as an Olympic sport at which Games?
Paris 2024
Paris 2024 was breaking's Olympic debut, approved by the IOC in December 2020; many practitioners see 'breakdancing' as a media label and prefer the term breaking.
Q 06Breaking developed among African American and Puerto Rican youth in which New York City borough?
The Bronx
Breaking emerged in the Bronx in the early 1970s alongside hip-hop, whose DJs such as Kool Herc looped the rhythmic drum breaks of funk and soul records for the dancers.
Q 07Which composer wrote the ballet Swan Lake in 1875-76?
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake in 1875-76, his first ballet score. The 1877 production flopped; the version most companies dance today is the 1895 Petipa and Ivanov revival in St. Petersburg.
Q 08The score of The Nutcracker is noted for its use of which bell-like keyboard instrument?
Celesta
The celesta gives the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy its bell-like sound; Tchaikovsky had it shipped from Paris and first used it in his 1891 symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.
Q 09The Nutcracker ballet is set on which night of the year?
Christmas Eve
The Nutcracker opens at a Christmas Eve party, where Clara is given the nutcracker doll that comes alive at midnight. The plot descends from E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
Q 10Roughly what share of annual ticket revenue do major US ballet companies earn from The Nutcracker?
40%
The Nutcracker brings major US companies roughly 40% of their annual ticket revenue. George Balanchine's 1954 New York City Ballet staging turned it into the annual holiday fixture it is across North America.
Q 11Flamenco developed within the gitano (Romani) subculture of which region of southern Spain?
Andalusia
Flamenco grew up among the gitanos of Andalusia, especially around Seville, Jerez and Cádiz; the oldest written record of flamenco music is in José Cadalso's Cartas Marruecas of 1774.
Q 12Riverdance began life in 1994 as a seven-minute interval act at which televised event?
The Eurovision Song Contest
Riverdance was the seven-minute interval act of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, hosted in Dublin on 30 April 1994. Composer Bill Whelan had already written Timedance for the 1981 contest's interval.
Q 13Which Irish dancing champion starred with Jean Butler when Riverdance opened as a full stage show in Dublin in 1995?
Q 21The term 'salsa' was popularised in 1960s-70s New York by Fania Records and which bandleader?
Johnny Pacheco
Johnny Pacheco, who co-founded Fania Records in 1964 and led the Fania All-Stars, helped make salsa the umbrella label for New York's Afro-Caribbean dance music rooted in Cuban son, mambo and cha-cha-chá.
Q 22Which BBC ballroom contest is franchised in about 60 countries as Dancing with the Stars?
Strictly Come Dancing
Strictly Come Dancing launched on BBC One on 15 May 2004 with Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly; its format was sold abroad as Dancing with the Stars, reaching about 60 countries.
Q 23Who hosted Dancing with the Stars for its first 28 seasons, starting in 2005?
Tom Bergeron
Michael Flatley
Michael Flatley and Jean Butler led the original Riverdance, which producers John McColgan and Moya Doherty expanded into a full show that opened in Dublin on 9 February 1995.
Q 14Which Spanish duo recorded 'Macarena', which topped the US chart for 14 weeks in 1996?
Los del Río
Los del Río, Antonio Romero and Rafael Ruiz from Seville, recorded Macarena; the Bayside Boys remix held the US No. 1 for 14 weeks in 1996, and VH1 named it the greatest one-hit wonder in 2002.
Q 15The Charleston, the defining dance of the 1920s, is named after a harbour city in which US state?
South Carolina
The dance takes its name from Charleston, South Carolina, the port city where its rhythm was associated with Black dockworkers; it swept the country after a 1923 song of the same name in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild.
Q 16Who wrote the song "The Twist" after seeing teenagers in Tampa, Florida, doing the dance?
Hank Ballard
His version was only the B-side of a 1959 single, "Teardrops on Your Letter", before a cover turned it into a phenomenon.
Q 17What is the ancient, pre-Western-contact style of Hawaiian hula called?
Kahiko
Hula kahiko is the ancient style, danced to chant and percussion such as the ipu gourd drum. The Western-influenced style that grew up in the 19th and 20th centuries is hula ʻauana, accompanied by guitar and ukulele.
Q 18Capoeira, blending fighting with dance, acrobatics and music, comes from which country?
Brazil
Capoeira was developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans and their descendants; it was banned under the 1890 penal code, and Mestre Bimba opened the first officially permitted academy in Salvador in the 1930s.
Q 19The Lindy Hop was born in 1928 in the African-American communities of which New York City neighbourhood?
Harlem
Its defining move is the swingout, and troupes such as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers took it around the world in the swing era.
Q 20The Lindy Hop takes its name from a 1927 feat by which aviator?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris in May 1927, and newspapers said Lucky Lindy had hopped the Atlantic; dancer Shorty George Snowden is said to have borrowed the headline to name the dance.
Tom Bergeron hosted Dancing with the Stars from its 2005 premiere through season 28 in 2019, while also fronting America's Funniest Home Videos on ABC; Tyra Banks replaced him in 2020.
Q 24Which 1990 documentary about New York's drag ball scene brought voguing to the mainstream?
Paris Is Burning
Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary on Harlem's ball culture, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991; voguing takes its name from the poses of models in Vogue magazine.
Q 25Bharatanatyam, the oldest of India's classical dance traditions, comes from which state?
Tamil Nadu
Bharatanatyam comes from Tamil Nadu, where it was danced in temples as Sadir before being renamed in 1932; it is known for its fixed upper torso, bent knees and rich hand-gesture vocabulary.
Q 26The name of the north Indian classical dance Kathak comes from a Sanskrit word meaning what?
Story
Kathak comes from katha, Sanskrit for story; the kathakaars were travelling storytellers who danced tales from the Hindu epics, and the form later absorbed Persian influences under Mughal court patronage.
Q 27Which actor played dance instructor Johnny Castle opposite Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing (1987)?
Patrick Swayze
Patrick Swayze played Johnny Castle opposite Jennifer Grey's Baby Houseman; writer Eleanor Bergstein based the story on her own childhood summers in the Catskills' Borscht Belt resorts.
Q 28Dirty Dancing was filmed largely at Lake Lure in which US state?
North Carolina
Lake Lure, North Carolina, stood in for the 1963 Catskills resort, with further scenes shot at Mountain Lake, Virginia; the film went on to earn over $214 million worldwide.
Q 29Tony Manero, John Travolta's disco-dancing character in Saturday Night Fever, lives in which NYC borough?
Brooklyn
Tony Manero lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and works in a paint store there. The story came from Nik Cohn's 1976 New York magazine article, which Cohn later admitted was largely invented.
Q 30Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 at an airport in which city?
Paris
Nureyev broke away from his KGB minders at Paris's Le Bourget airport on 16 June 1961, aged 23, as the Kirov tour left for London; he later directed the Paris Opera Ballet from 1983 to 1989.