First Person: Deney Terrio

Every dance move that John Travolta did in Saturday Night Fever came from me. The finger point, the splits, knee drops … I invented all of it. Growing up in Titusville, Florida, I loved dancing. My sister would have pyjama parties, and I used to peek through the window. They always danced to soul records, so right away I saw that women loved to dance. Dance is romance. It’s also the best pick-up line. All you have to do is ask.

I never had any formal training, just a natural talent. When I was 13, I was winning dance contests. I’d seen Byron Gilliam, an amazing African-American dancer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In TV show in the 1960s, and knew I wanted to dance like that. So I started dancing like a black man. I’d go over to the black high school – this was when there were even separate black and white drinking fountains – and I’d be the only white face there. The only reason I didn’t get the crap kicked out of me was because I could dance.

What I was doing was a form of street dancing, which I had perfected so that it looked choreographed. It was pre-disco, but when disco came along, my steps fitted right in. In the early 1970s, I moved to Los Angeles with $150 in my pocket. I started winning dance contests, and suddenly I was making $400 a week, which was a lot of money then. People would say to me, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I like it.”

Around that time I heard that John Travolta was doing a dance movie and they needed a choreographer. I went to his manager’s office and started moving the furniture so I could dance.

He was about to call the police. Kool & The Gang’s “Jungle Boogie” was on the radio – I started jumping off the walls. The guy’s sitting there eating a sandwich while I’m doing knee slides. When the song ended, he said, “How’d you like to do a movie with John Travolta?”

This was in 1976. Disco was dying. In fact, the original script of Saturday Night Fever just had line dancing in it. But once I showed them what I could do, they rewrote it. I met Travolta five months before filming started. He told me, “I already know how to dance.” So I put on some music and said, “Let’s see.” When he finished dancing, I said, “Well, at least you’ve got some rhythm. Now sit down.” I showed him everything I knew, including the finger point. He said, “I want to dance like that.”

John was a great student, but it took a while. I’d take him to nightclubs in LA to test-market his moves. I was the king of the disco then and when I’d start dancing, everybody would clear off the floor. John was intimidated, but we kept working at it and eventually he got it. One night at a club, he did the splits and then a knee-drop. People formed a circle around him. I said, “Add the point.” The rest is history.

After the movie came out, all of a sudden guys in Oklahoma were taking dance classes. And it was because John made it look masculine.

The sad thing is that my part in that got buried. But word spread, and one day TV host Merv Griffin, who created the game show Jeopardy!, got in touch. He said, “You’re going to host a new dance show.” It was called Dance Fever and ran from 1979 to 1987. That was the greatest time of my life. You could dance all night, meet girls. But the partying backfired. I burned out on drugs and alcohol and I had a run-in with Merv – I sued him for sexual harassment but I lost. It went from something I loved to something horrible.

I took 10 years off. But now, at 62, I’m choreographing my first play, 3C, which is set in 1978. Someone was smart enough to say, “Let’s get the guy who started all of this.” You have to change in life – but at the same time, I’ve always stuck to my roots.

‘3C’, by David Adjmi, runs at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New York, NY, until July 14, www.rattlestick.org