promoting itself as " an instructional dance film , " twist purports to chronicle the evolution of rock-and-roll dance . instead it jumbles together a wide and disjointed assortment of nostalgic images , leaving the audience to figure out what it's all about . as a result , twist is a dance documentary with two left feet . the film is structured as eight dance " lessons , " complete with flashy title boards , but there's nothing especially unique to be learned from each section . canadian producer/director ron mann uses a combination of old film and television footage and interviews with now middle-aged american bandstand dancers and recording artists . he spotlights these performers by having them jiggle in front of heavily stylized backgrounds and , frankly , it's embarrassing . it's clear from the observations of betty ( romantini ) begg , carole ( scaldeferri ) spada and floss ( harvey ) mancini why they are dancers , not commentators , as mann allows them to ramble on even though they have almost nothing to say . in addition , hank ballard , joey dee , and to some extent chubby checker come across as egotistical jerks--surely not the director's intention . the film kicks off with the early 1950s , when ballroom dancing was all the rage . in the juke joints and nightclubs of harlem , places like smalls , the apollo and the savoy , a rising young star called hank ballard and his group the midnighters were performing their hits , songs like " get it , " " sexy ways , " and the infamous " work with me annie . " ballard's lyrics were raw and suggestive . with the arrival of such notables as elvis presley , disc jockeys on radio stations like philadelphia's wdas stopped calling ballard's style of music r&b and started calling it rock and roll-- " to attract the white kids . " on wfil-tv's american bandstand , regulars on the show started imitating the black kids and claiming the dance steps as their own . mann's interview with bandstand dancers joan ( buck ) kiene and jimmy peatross attempts to illustrate how the white mainstream ripped off the african- american culture . as a political message it's too simplistic ; mann lingers on their shallow repetitiveness and misses the opportunity to make a major statement . most of the information presented in twist isn't new--the fact that rock and roll was considered to be a " communicable disease " under eisenhower's presidency , for example--but the section on the twist itself is informative and well-structured . in 1959 , ballard's recording " the twist " took the nation by storm . twisting was easy ; you just moved your hips . as legend has it , dick clark assumed that the song would be too dirty coming from ballard , and it didn't show up on bandstand until the cleaner-imaged chubby checker recorded his version in 1960 . a year later the dance had become a world-wide sensation and the song returned to number one , spawning over 300 twist spin-offs . it was probably the first time those immortal words " it's got a good beat and you can dance to it " were spoken on prime time tv . at a new york club called the peppermint lounge , manhattan's rich and famous were rubbing shoulders with the commonfolk to get in on the action . for a brief moment the film becomes quite fascinating ; we learn how influential the twist really was , starting fashion trends and saturating popular culture . if only the rest of the film could have maintained this momentum . unfortunately , mann follows this portion of the film with a downward-spiraling epilogue that simply flings more contrived dance floor maneuvers in our face . the swim , the jerk , the watusi--all less successful derivations . the hully gully and the hucklebuck ; imitations that paled by comparison . when the british invaded in 1964 , one kind of musical hysteria was traded for another . for all the shimmying and shaking going on in the film , twist is amazingly lacking in energy . the archive footage is varied and often fun ( a clip in which marshall mcluhan shares his thoughts on the dance craze , for example , is a howl ) , but mann does very little with it . many scenes lack continuity . after a while , the frenzied black-and-white footage of teenagers bopping and jitterbugging becomes repetitive and ultimately boring . it's hard to tell the fly from the frug , the millie from the monkey . even though twist runs only seventy-eight minutes , it's a long haul . it's not clear whether twist is supposed to be a celebration , a tribute , or a condensed history lesson . as a simple account of dance styles from the fifties and sixties , it's poorly-conceived ( it would have made a fine short film ) . for all its instructional aspirations , twist doesn't know when to lead and when to follow . 
