First steps for Nutbush Quest goes on for origin of line dance

For 50 years, Australian primary school students have been learning the steps to a dance that will carry them through social events and weddings and allow them to locate other Australians across crowded nightclubs anywhere in the world.

- Eliza Spencer

Nowhere else do they do the Nutbush. But while almost every Australian knows the steps, no one knows who created the dance.

Two professors - Panizza Allmark from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and Jon Stratton from the University of South Australia - have narrowed down their search for the choreographer to a teacher's conference in New South Wales in 1975.

"What we seem to know is that there was a committee in the New South Wales education department that devised the idea of the Nutbush," Stratton said. "Whether they devised the dance itself, we don't really know. But what's interesting is that nobody has come forward."

The conference was held two years after the song Nutbush City Limits was released by Tina Turner. It is part of the reason behind Australia's special love for the soul singer, who died last year.

Line dances were reckoned to be a good way to get children up and moving in physical education classes; the steps to the Nutbush are similar to the Madison, a line dance popularised in the US in 1960. But Allmark and Stratton say the Nutbush remains a uniquely Australian dance.