We were forced to do this Johannesburg dance, the Pata Pata, against our wills. To be honest, everything they made us do in gym class was against our will all those decades ago. Still, I have met no one who even heard of this dance, much less was made to learn it.
We also learned a square dance and the Charleston, but the Pata Pata stuck with me. You’d think doing a choreographed Rockette-style Charleston would be the stand out. But no, it was the Pata Pata. Probably because it was such a simple dance that we were allowed to-- no- highly encouraged to embellish. By the end of the semester we had some pretty cool Pata Pata moves we invented with our friends.
I’m wondering if they made you learn dances in gym, any dance at all. But especially if it was the Pata Pata.
Square dance, yes. Pata Pata, no. That was in middle school for me. In high school our gym classes were divided into 9-week periods where we could choose from about a half dozen different activities for that period. I recall dancing was one of them, but I don’t know what all they did.
One or two weeks a year of square dancing and maybe some other traditional American folk dances. They brought in a local professional caller once a year to lead it. I hated it. But I hated almost everything about gym class, so that was par for the course. I’ve never head of the Pata Pata.
Absolutely no dancing of any kind was taught in my school - perhaps not surprising as this was Idaho, where you could probably reenact Footloose in some places.
We learned the Filipino dance Tinikling and square dancing in 6th grade physical education, but no other dancing after that, but then my high school was all male.
I did, but we had gym electives back in the day and I intentionally chose any dance class whenever that was an option. Our fun warmup was The Salty Dog Rag.
We danced to the Pata Pata song in PE in folk dancing class (which was held after school in the gym). I don’t know if the dance we did would be recognized as the Pata Pata, since in my vague memory we did the same moves we used for the song “Amos Moses” and a couple of other songs.
Every time I hear the Pata Pata song, I’m transformed back to those days.
La Jota de la Era
But I do remember Pata Pata because one time they put it on in the radio, and they’d mistakenly left the player at 45 when the record was a 33 (45 sized), and one of the DJs told the other one “no, no, leave it! Leave it!” When it was finished, he said “Makeba is so good she even sounds good in smurf mode! OK, now I let you play it again at the right speed.”
And anybody who doesn’t understand what those numbers mean should put some money in the money-for-sweets jar before getting off my lawn.
In 6th grade (1973-1974) we did square dancing and had a blast. Then in 9th grade, we were taught the foxtrot, box step, and then to our amazement and glee… the Hustle!!
Square dancing, polka, Schottisch and even disco! But never heard of the Pata Pata.
As I got older, I figured the dancing wasn’t so much about exercise as socializing us farm boys. You know, how to touch girls politely and interact in social situations. Like how “gym” used to be the place they’d teach sex ed, but in our case we had real sex ed (with both genders present) in a classroom.
