About
Tutting is a style of hip hop dance that involves popping one’s hands and arms at perpendicular angles in sync to the beat. The dance can be traced back to the 1970s, but it found increased popularity in late 2013 through “hand tutting” videos on Vine.
Origin
Tutting originated from the choreography of 1970s funk band King Boogaloo Tut and Street Scape. In 2009, tutorials for the dance started popping up on YouTube.[5] While tutting can include moving arms and even extend to the rest of your body, many Vine users creating videos for the dance limit themselves to finger tutting.
Precursors
After its introduction in the ‘70s tutting became a staple of hip hop dancing in the 1980s and was re-popularized in the early ’90s by the video from Madonna’s “Vogue.”
Spread
The first Urban Dictionary[1] entry was submitted by user Ike on June 18th, 2006 which defined the dance as when you “change the angles of arms according to the beat.” In June 2011 a French ad for Samsung mobile featured JayFunk[4], a tutter from Los Angeles perform finger tutting. On November 28th, 2010 a video titled “the ART of TUTTING”[2] was uploaded on Youtube showing two men practicing the dance with each other. A Buzzfeed article titled ""Tutting" Is A Really Weird And Hypnotic Hand Dance That’s Super Popular On Vine"[3] highlighting the dance and examining its emergence as a trend on Vine was published on December 31st, 2013.