Tulsa Drillers stake claim to Chicken Dance fame with alternate identity

If you were to look up the Chicken Dance on Wikipedia, you would learn an awful lot about the oompah earworm of a song. For instance, there are more than a dozen alternate names for it from around the world, including “Tchip Tchip,” “Danse des Canards,” and “Il Ballo del Qua Qua.” It was composed in the 1950s by a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas.

And after a considerable amount of scrolling, near the bottom of the page, you would learn that in 1981, the song and its associated dance were performed at Oktoberfest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it earned its American name, the Chicken Dance, because a local TV station gave a dancer a chicken costume—notable because the song had been associated with ducks rather than chickens until then.

The Tulsa Drillers, Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, have seized on their hometown’s association with this cultural institution, announcing that they’ll play four games as the Chicken Dancers during their annual 918 Weekend. The announcement came with the unveiling of an alternate brand created by Brandiose, featuring a dancing chicken wielding a stein of beer and dressed for for Oktoberfest with gold lederhosen and a feathered cap. A festive wordmark includes a backwards K (perhaps because the chicken struck out looking).