Learn where Alfonso Ribeiro created the carlton dance for ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’
Alfonso Ribeiro played Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air from 1990-96. Most recently, Ribeiro won season 19 of “Dancing With the Stars.” He will also take over as host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” in the fall. But, before becoming a host and winning Dancing with the Stars, Ribiero was a co-star on one of America’s most watched sit-coms.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was one of the first young African American series that mixed hip-hop with comedy. In a recent interview with, Variety, Alfonso Ribeiro revealed where the dance came from:
The only moment (of going off script) for me was one episode where Will was in a cabin, and he’s supposed to be tied up by this girl and then … he comes back and tells me that he might have killed her, and I go crazy. I told the director, “Listen, just keep a camera on me. I’m going to be crazy.” It ended up at the end of the show, where I got down on my hands and knees and pulled myself across (the stage) and ran up in the audience and came through the elevator doors in the school. It was one of those silly on-set moments that ended up making it to air.
The Carlton Dance was created when it said in the script: “Carlton dances.” It was never even intended to be funny; it was just that he was dancing. The dance is ultimately Courtney Cox in the Bruce Springsteen video “Dancing in the Dark”; that’s the basis. Or in Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” video, “The White Man Dance” as he called it. And I said, “That is the corniest dance on the planet that I know of, so why don’t I do that?”
The dance will live forever as the Carlton dance.
Source: Variety
