From it's beginnings, Rock and Roll has been associated with dancing. Teen dances in the '50s fell into two categories: slow and fast. With slow dances couples held each other close and moved slowly around the dance floor in a type of box step. Fast rock and roll dances usually took the form of the Jitterbug, a holdover from the big band swing of the '30s and '40s. Again couples touched, if only by hand, and engaged in a variety of fast steps that could include considerable virtuosity and gymnastics.

Billy Haley and his Comets fused elements of country music, Western swing, and black R&B to produce some of rock and roll's earliest hits. His "Crazy, Man Crazy" from 1953 was the first rock and roll record to make the pop charts. Today Bill Haley and many other rock and roll singers still influence the way people dance to Rock and Roll, through dance contests to dance classes this style has had an iconic effect on everything rock and roll in present day dance.