Recent talk about a reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air made mention of keeping the original vibe of the show intact, a large part of which may include ensuring the Carlton dance is given a place in the script. 

However, during the show's original run, there wasn't a whole lot of detail on what exactly that dance should look like. In a recent interview with Variety, Alfonso Riberio, who played Carlton on the show, revealed that the script for the first episode where he debuted the dance had only two words: "Carlton dances". 

Ribeiro stated that he knew nothing about artists like Tom Jones or Barry Manilow that his character was supposed to love, and as he grew up in the Bronx, "I was a hip-hop kid". As a result, he wasn't sure what the dancing should look like, adding "it was never even intended to be funny; it was just that he was dancing". 

He decided to pull together two moves that he thought would capture the spirit of his character well, "Courteney Cox in the Bruce Springsteen video 'Dancing in the Dark'" and "Eddie Murphy’s Delirious video, 'The White Man Dance' as he called it [...] I said, 'That is the corniest dance on the planet that I know of, so why don't I do that?'". 

Via Brobible

Via Brobible

The rest, as they say, is history but the dance skills learned there helped Ribeiro to win season 19 of Dancing With The Stars, so it was time well spent, at least. 

Via Variety