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The Electric (better known as The Electric Slide) is a four wall line dance set to Marcia Griffiths and Bunny Wailer's song "Electric Boogie".[1]
Choreographer, pianist and Broadway performer Richard L. "Ric" Silver created the dance in 1976 from a demo of the Bunny Wailer recording. There are several variations of the dance. The original choreography has 22 steps,[2] but variants include the Freeze (16-step), Cowboy Motion (24-step), Cowboy Boogie (24 step), and the Electric Slide 2 (18-step). The 18-step variation became popular in 1989 and for ten years was listed by Linedancer Magazine as the number-one dance in the world.[citation needed]
The original dance was choreographed to be danced in two lines facing each other and in the course the opposite dancers circle each other.[3]
In 2007, Silver filed DMCA-based take-down notices to YouTube users who posted videos of people performing the 18-step dance variation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis against Silver, asking the court to protect Machulis's free speech rights in recording a few steps of the dance in a documentary video posted to the Internet.[4] On May 22, 2007, the EFF came to an agreement to settle the lawsuit: the settlement states that Silver will license the Electric Slide under a Creative Commons noncommercial license[5] and to also post the new license on any of his current or future websites that mention the Electric Slide.
The Electric Slide's popularity has seen a resurgence since the 2010s, paired with Cameo's 1986 song "Candy".[citation needed]