Placerville Oktoberfest Chicken Dance (Video)

Bergermeister Jeff Winzeler gives pointers on the infamous Chicken Dance.

To prevent the situation where you are left standing in your Lederhosen gazing into your beer mug, unsure of what to do on the dance floor, here's a lesson on the Chicken Dance. Any Oktoberfest celebration wouldn't be complete without it.

For the easy version, all that's really required is that you:

1. Put the fingers and thumbs of each hand together so that you have two chicken beaks--sort of
2. Raise your beaks to at least shoulder level to look engaged an interested--higher is better--and open and close them four times to the other dancers
3. Bend your arms at the elbows to simulate bird wings and flap four times.
4. Wiggle your behind as you bend and your knees so you lower to the floor and comeback up as you continue to wiggle. (Try to do this to four beats in order to look like a pro.)
5. Repeat the steps, but going faster and faster until the song ends.

History of the Chicken Dance

Widely known as the Chicken Dance, this dance song was composed by Werner Thomas in the 1970s in Davos, Switzerland, and was originally entitled Der Ententanz, which means The Duck Dance, but became known as the Vogeltanz, Chicken Dance, and also as Dance Little Bird. There were many versions of this that became hit songs, but the song and dance have had the greatest longevity in the U.S., where it has become a popular German heritage song.