Alfonso Ribeiro: The Origin of the 'Fresh Prince' Carlton Dance Revealed

— -- The Carlton Dance is something that will forever live on in the hearts and minds of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" fans everywhere.

Well, now we know what inspired the actor Alfonso Ribeiro to give his character Carlton Banks such an awkward dance.

The actor and "Dancing With the Stars" champion, 43, wrote a fun piece for Variety and explained where the iconic move, set to the music of Tom Jones, actually came from.

"I played a character that was as far from myself as possible. They would have to bring me a CD and some articles for me to read up on what the character liked, because I had never heard of Tom Jones," he writes. "I didn’t know Barry Manilow. These weren’t people that I grew up with or experienced as a teenager. I grew up in the Bronx; I was a hip-hop kid."

Ribeiro added that in the script when it said "Carlton dances," it was "never even intended to be funny; it was just that he was dancing."

"The dance is ultimately Courteney Cox in the Bruce Springsteen video 'Dancing in the Dark'; that’s the basis. Or in Eddie Murphy’s 'Delirious' video, 'The White Man Dance' as he called it. And I said, 'That is the corniest dance on the planet that I know of, so why don’t I do that?'" he revealed.

So, there you have it, how the Carlton Dance came to be the greatest dance of all time.