Who invented the chicken dance?
The tune remained in obscurity for years after being written in the late 1950s by a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas when he was in his 20s, who at the time tended a flock of ducks and geese so the tune was first named “Der Ententanz” (The Duck Dance.) Mr. Thomas began performing his song at his Davos restaurant around 1963 and got an immediate reaction. People spontaneously “began to move with the melody.” A leg here, an arm up there and suddenly Thomas thought of his animals. The dance evolved to include a beak, wing and tail motions. Mr. Thomas eventually named the song “Tchirp-Tchirp,” to mimic the sound of a bird. But it didn’t spread beyond the resort town until 1971, when a Belgian music publisher stopped in the restaurant and took a liking to the song. The publisher added words for the first time-in Dutch, his native language-and the song quickly became a success in Europe. Sometime in the late 1970s, the song acquired the name “Vogeltanz” (bird dance) or “Vogerltanz”
