In honor of Easter, I thought we’d take a look at the upbeat, dance craze Bunny Hop.
The Bunny Hop is a novelty dance created at Balboa High School in San Francisco in 1952.
The song was a vocal hit in 1952 and instrumentally re-recorded around 1958.
The song has been released by other artists through the years. Duke Ellington recorded “Bunny Hop Mambo” in 1954.
“The dance is a variation on a conga line. Participants dance in a line or a circle, holding on to the hips of the person in front of them. They tap the floor two times with their right foot, then with their left foot, then they hop forwards, backwards, and finally three hops forward to finish the sequence, which continues throughout the tune. The first person in the line or the open circle leads the group around the floor.”
The Bunny Hop is a dance for a dance party. The Bunny Hop has been featured on TV episodes such as Family Ties, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Everybody Loves Raymond and Newhart.
On the B-side of Ray Anthony’s recording was another novelty dance classic that is well known, the “Hokey Pokey”.