The Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious is said to have introduced the pogo dance to London’s club scene. The claim is associated with the early punk shows of 1976, when Vicious was part of the emerging London punk movement.
The pogo involves jumping repeatedly up and down, usually with a stiff torso and close-set legs. Its name comes from the pogo stick, whose bouncing motion the dance resembles. It quickly became associated with punk concerts, where crowded audiences used it as an energetic way to move to fast, aggressive music.
The story is best treated as a claim rather than a firmly documented invention. Sid Vicious reportedly described himself as the dance’s originator in the 2000 documentary The Filth and the Fury, but other people may have performed similar movements earlier. Even so, the Sex Pistols connection is the standard trivia answer.
The pogo is often confused with moshing, but the styles developed differently. Pogoing is primarily vertical bouncing, whereas moshing generally involves broader, more forceful movement among concertgoers. The pogo is commonly regarded as an early precursor to modern mosh-pit dancing.