Context: Whacking (originally punking) is a dance that originated in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s and 70’s in the gay clubs. It is a dance about expressing things that could not be expressed outwardly at that time. There is a rich and interesting history surrounding the dance. One of the originators of the dance, Viktor Manoel, resides in Los Angeles and teaches several online classes about the history of the dance. I will make a more in-depth blog post about whacking at some point, but until then I recommend the wikipedia page.

The group Whacking LA is committed to preserving the dance form in Los Angeles, and often hosts shows or battles that feature whacking. In April of 2023, they hosted a showcase to present choreographed (or improvised) numbers to share with the community. This was the first event that I was interested in creating something to share with the community. Up until this point I had only participated in choreographed dances, but hadn’t ever really choreographed something myself.

The idea for this dance came up very organically one day, when Colleen (who is also the one I am dancing with in the video) was driving me home from a practice, where we were talking about Ayesha Erotica and listening to her music in the car. In the true spirit of whacking/punking, we wanted to perform something that was distinct from what we thought other people might do. The showcase was open to any concept, but I thought most people would share something that they don’t usually have the opportunity to share during battles.

So naturally, we created something that was as vapid, lacking in substance, and saying almost nothing about anything that matters. We played the role of two party girlies waking up from the night before. If you find some deeper commentary on the destructive party culture of Los Angeles, that is on you. We only had fun on the mind.


Performing this in front of a bunch of friends from the whacking community was very validating. One of my favorite memories was when Viktor approached us after the performance and thanked us for making him feel less crass about talking about the origins of the term “punking” (which has to do with the word spunk, and I will leave it at that for now). Doing this very chill event really pushed me to develop something, and I look forward to creating more dances in the coming years!