The pogo is a dance style which emerged around 1976 and can be encountered at punk concerts. It is said that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols invented this dance. A circle is formed in front of the stage, a so-called moshpit or pogo mob. Inside this circle, people dance pogo, jumping up and down in an eight-count-rhythm. Occasionally a dancer goes offbeat and collides with other dancers. There is no system to it; dancers follow only their intuition. An uninformed bystander might get the impression that the dancers are beating each other up. Sometimes people do get hurt and injured when pogo-ing. But people who fall to the ground are mostly helped to get up, not trampled. There is an understanding that Pogo is fun, not fight.
There are even tougher versions of the pogo, for example the "pig pogo", where people kick and lay about. The risk of injury in this variant is a little higher, although it is not allowed to hurt others on purpose.
The pogo originated around 1976 as the anti-disco-dance of the alternative punk movement. The motto was to move against the lullabying discotheque rhythms. At the beginning, punkmusic was played very fast to distinguish itself from the disco-mainstream. Punkbands play primarily live music, therefore the pogo is danced on the stage as well as in the crowd.
Also, there is evidence of Ringo dancing the pogo in a scene in the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night.
See also
Stagediving and Crowd surfing developed from the Pogo.