Today I would like to report on a startling new discovery (made in collaboration with my wife, Dr. A. M. Belis of the Metropolitan Museum): the Chicken Dance did not originate in Switzerland in the 1950s as is commonly believed, but in ancient Greece. The evidence is provided by an Athenian black-figure hydria in the Met, attributed to the Circle of Lydos and dating to ca. 560 BCE.
These figures probably represent the chorus of a Greek comedy, but they are clearly doing the Chicken Dance to the accompaniment of a flautist.