This dancing trivia quiz has 140 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 140 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
Argentina and Uruguay jointly got the dance added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2009.
Q 02Ballet originated during the Renaissance of the fifteenth century in which country?
Italy
It was later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia, which is why its vocabulary is French.
Q 03The waltz is danced in which time signature?
3/4
The name comes from the German Walzer, meaning to roll or revolve, and the dance shocked 18th-century society because couples held each other so closely.
Q 04Which singer made the moonwalk famous during "Billie Jean" on Motown 25 in 1983?
Michael Jackson
The move existed for decades before that night; California dancers called it the backslide, tap dancers called it a skate and Marcel Marceau called it walking against the wind.
Q 05Breaking (breakdancing) made its debut as an Olympic sport at which Games?
Paris 2024
The IOC approved it in December 2020 after a proposal by the World DanceSport Federation; many practitioners prefer the term breaking, seeing 'breakdancing' as a media label.
Q 06Breaking developed among African American and Puerto Rican youth in which New York City borough?
The Bronx
The dance grew up alongside hip-hop, whose DJs 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
The ballet was a failure at first; the version most companies dance today is the 1895 Petipa and Ivanov revival staged in St. Petersburg.
Q 08The score of The Nutcracker is noted for its use of which bell-like keyboard instrument?
Celesta
The composer had already used the instrument in his little-known 1891 symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.
Q 09Which company gave the 1877 premiere of Swan Lake in Moscow?
Bolshoi Ballet
The original choreographer was Julius Reisinger; the same ballerina now usually dances both the white swan Odette and the black swan Odile.
Q 10The Nutcracker ballet is set on which night of the year?
Christmas Eve
The plot comes from Alexandre Dumas's retelling of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
Q 11Roughly what share of annual ticket revenue do major US ballet companies earn from The Nutcracker?
40%
The full ballet was initially less successful than the 20-minute suite that had premiered nine months earlier; it only became a North American staple from the late 1960s.
Q 12Flamenco developed within the gitano (Romani) subculture of which region of southern Spain?
Andalusia
The oldest written record of flamenco music dates to 1774, in José Cadalso's book Las Cartas Marruecas.
Q 13Riverdance began life in 1994 as a seven-minute interval act at which televised event?
The Eurovision Song Contest
Q 21The 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 22The Lindy Hop takes its name from a 1927 feat by which aviator?
Charles Lindbergh
Newspapers said 'Lucky Lindy' had 'hopped the Atlantic', and the first dances called lindy hop appeared around the time of his flight.
Q 23The term 'salsa' was popularised in 1960s-70s New York by Fania Records and which bandleader?
Johnny Pacheco
It was an umbrella label for a New York form of Afro-Caribbean dance music with roots in Cuban son, danzón, mambo and cha-cha-chá.
Its roots go back further: composer Bill Whelan had written a suite called Timedance for the 1981 Eurovision interval act.
Q 14Which male Irish dancing champion starred alongside Jean Butler in the original Riverdance?
Michael Flatley
Producers John McColgan and Moya Doherty expanded the act into a full stage show that opened in Dublin on 9 February 1995.
Q 15Which Spanish duo recorded 'Macarena', which topped the US chart for 14 weeks in 1996?
Los del Río
VH1 ranked it the No. 1 greatest one-hit wonder of all time in 2002, and all versions have sold more than 14 million copies.
Q 16The Charleston, the defining dance of the 1920s, is named after a harbour city in which US state?
South Carolina
The rhythm was popularised by James P. Johnson's 1923 tune from the Broadway show Runnin' Wild, and the dance peaked in 1926-27.
Q 17Whose 1959 recording of 'The Twist' hit No. 1 in 1960 and again in 1962, launching a dance craze?
Chubby Checker
Dick Clark suggested the cover after noticing teenagers doing the dance; in 2012 the singer led an estimated 4,000 people in a record-setting mass twist in DeLand, Florida.
Q 18Who 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 19What is the ancient, pre-Western-contact style of Hawaiian hula called?
Kahiko
The Western-influenced style that grew up in the 19th and 20th centuries is ʻauana, a word meaning to wander or drift, and uses guitar and ukulele.
Q 20Capoeira, blending fighting with dance, acrobatics and music, comes from which country?
Brazil
It was first mentioned in an official document in 1789 as an offence and was only legalised in 1937.
Q 24Which BBC ballroom contest did Guinness name the world's most successful reality TV format in 2010?
Strictly Come Dancing
The format has been exported to about 60 countries as Dancing with the Stars, and it has aired live on Saturday nights since May 2004.
Q 25Who hosted Dancing with the Stars for its first 28 seasons, starting in 2005?
Tom Bergeron
He was simultaneously hosting America's Funniest Home Videos on ABC when the show premiered.
Q 26The BBC dance contest's title merges Come Dancing with which 1992 Baz Luhrmann film?
Strictly Ballroom
Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly presented from the first series in 2004; Baz Luhrmann's film was his feature debut.
Q 27Which 1990 documentary about New York's drag ball scene brought voguing to the mainstream?
Paris Is Burning
The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991; the dance draws on the poses of models in Vogue magazine.
Q 28Bharatanatyam, the oldest of India's classical dance traditions, comes from which state?
Tamil Nadu
It was known as Sadiraattam until it was renamed in 1932, and is famous for its fixed upper torso, bent knees and hand-gesture vocabulary.
Q 29The name of the north Indian classical dance Kathak comes from a Sanskrit word meaning what?
Story
The kathakaar were travelling storytellers who danced tales from the Hindu epics; Kathak is also the only Indian classical dance to carry Persian elements, thanks to Mughal court patronage.
Q 30Which actor played dance instructor Johnny Castle opposite Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing (1987)?
Patrick Swayze
Writer Eleanor Bergstein based the story on her own childhood summers in the Catskills' Borscht Belt.