Barry Bostwick has a witty response at the ready anytime someone asks him if he can do the Time Warp.
“I go, ‘Well, is it a step to the left or is it a step to the right?’ They have to say it’s to the left. I say, ‘Because I only remember the pelvic thrust.’ That to me was the most important part of that dance,” says “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” star about one of the soundtrack’s signature songs.
The music of “Rocky Horror” for decades has entertained generations of fans, from the original 1973 stage show in England to the 1975 cult classic movie to so many revivals and midnight showings since. Everybody’s got their favorite showtune, but what was supposed to just be a twist on the Twist, the buoyant and catchy “Time Warp,” found a life of its own.
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Fran-N-Furter (Tim Curry, center) with his minions Columbia (Nell Campbell), Magenta (Patricia Quinn) and Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien) in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“The genius thing was the ‘Time Warp’ told you how to do it,” says Patricia Quinn, who played the servant Magenta on both stage and screen. “The only other song to do that was the ‘Hokey Pokey.’ “
‘Time Warp’ came from needing a ‘Rocky Horror’ dance
Rehearsing for the original “The Rocky Horror Show” stage show in 1973, director Jim Sharman wanted a song-and-dance number for the three servants. Riff Raff (O’Brien), Magenta and Columbia (Nell Campbell) are minions of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a lingerie-clad mad scientist from the planet Transsexual who creates a “Frankenstein”-esque muscle man named Rocky.
Campbell recalls Sharman asking for something like the scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s French film “Bande à Part” “where two gangsters and their moll put some money in a jukebox, and the three of them in unison dance the Madison.” (A popular 1950s line dance, the Madison is also mentioned in passing in the “Rocky Horror” movie.)
O’Brien went home and wrote the “Time Warp” overnight. Quinn’s first reaction: “I looked at that and thought, ‘Oh, God, do I have to learn all this?’ ”
With ‘Rocky Horror’ movie, the ‘Time Warp’ grows in size and scope
The colorful Transylvanians do the “Time Warp” dance in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Time Warp” got a major revamp as the stage musical was turned into a film. It swapped spots and now led into Curry’s big intro number “Sweet Transvestite.” Plus, an ensemble of more than a dozen “Transylvanians,” Frank-N-Furter’s band of colorful acolytes played by London actors, were added to the film’s rambunctious “Time Warp” sequence.
Joining original stage actors were Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, playing the innocent young couple Brad and Janet who accidentally wind up in Frank’s gothic castle, and “Time Warp” is the moment where their collective world is rocked.
Columbia (Nell Campbell) hopped off a jukebox and tap-danced into the hearts of fans in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“It was a little bit like ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ You were watching something very foreign but delightful because all the Transylvanians brought their own personalities to that dance,” Bostwick remembers. “Your eyes were always bouncing between the creativity that those very stoned people were doing that day on that set.”
In terms of characters, “Time Warp” is most significant for Columbia, who sings a bit of an origin story plus gets a glitzy intro and that nifty tap break. “You would have thought I was Fred Astaire. I went over it and over it” during filming, Campbell says. She also appreciated her costume makeover, from her “hideous” old stage getup – including pedal pushers and some sock garters – to a sequin-filled movie outfit of yellow jacket and top hat, red bow and multicolored corset and shorts.
“It was so fabulously sparkly,” Campbell says. “I don’t mind pedal pushers in life but my God, when you’ve got these gams, you might as well show them off.”
Now, ‘Time Warp’ lives on as a pop-culture staple
Once “Rocky Horror” found a following as a midnight-movie phenomenon, “the ‘Time Warp’ went into discos and was taken up by the public generally,” Quinn says.
“Time Warp” and its dance are now performed at everything from weddings and bar mitzvahs, not to mention various cover versions and its appearance on Halloween song compilations.
Everyone still “gravitates” toward this “silly spoof” off the ridiculous dances of yesteryear, says Linus O’Brien, son of Richard O’Brien and director of the “Rocky Horror” documentary “Strange Journey.”
“When my son was in elementary school, they were playing all these Halloween songs and then the ‘Time Warp’ comes on, and I turned around to another parent and said, ‘God, why are they playing this song?’ ” O’Brien says, laughing. “It was a bit outrageous for elementary school.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Time Warp’ dance still winning hearts as ‘Rocky Horror’ turns 50
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