Alfonso Ribeiro Says ‘The Carlton Dance’ Was Inspired By Courteney Cox and Eddie Murphy
When you think about Alfonso Ribeiro's character Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", you probably think of one thing: The infamous "Carlton Dance."
Well, Alfonso now says the inspiration for those moves came from two places: Bruce Springsteen's iconic "Dancing in the Dark" video and an Eddie Murphy comedy routine.
He tells Buzzfeed.com, quote, "There was a video of Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Cox called 'Dancing in the Dark', and Bruce Springsteen pulls her up onto the stage and she basically does that dance.
"It was also from Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' comedy video where he does 'The White Man Dance.' What I did was ultimately take those two dances and combined them and made it my own, and made it my character's."
(The "White Man Dance" was actually in Eddie Murphy's "Raw", not "Delirious".)
Alfonso adds that there IS an art to the dance, and most screw it up. He says, quote, "The biggest mistake is that [people] don't understand...they don't know what the dance is.
"The arms lead the body, then they always try to follow the arms. They just get it wrong."
This isn't a bunch of nonsense. Alfonso IS right on point. It does look like they're doing the "Carlton Dance" in the "Dancing in the Dark" video and it DOES seem like it's a play on Eddie Murphy's white people dance.
Check it out:
Here's video of the "Carlton Dance":
And here's Eddie Murphy's white person dance. At that last link, Eddie does the dance about 40 seconds in: (WARNING: This clip is LOADED with UNCENSORED PROFANITY.)
For a quicker comparison, here's a .gif of Carlton...one of Bruce and Courteney...and one of Eddie Murphy. So apparently, the "Carlton Dance" wasn't something goofy they just came up with on the spot. Who knew?
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