Search YouTube for the Harlem Shake and more than 200,000 results pop up: a group of sky divers thrust their pelvises and pump their fists in a wild dance move while falling amid the clouds; members of the University of Georgia men’s swim-and-dive team do similar moves in their trunks underwater; Norwegian Army officers stand stoically in camouflage and berets before breaking into their version of the dance, all set to an electronic groove.

There is a Harlem Shake puppy edition, a grandma edition and a stripper edition, inspired by a song from the producer Baauer that is currently in its second week atop the Billboard Hot 100 — thanks largely to this deluge of videos.

The thing is, this worldwide dance contagion is not the Harlem Shake.

The real Harlem Shake, a much more raw, technical, fluid, frenetic dance, was born in New York City more than 30 years ago. During halftime at streetball games held in Rucker Park, a skinny man known in the neighborhood as Al. B. would entertain the crowd with his own brand of moves, a dance that around Harlem became known as “The Al. B.”

“He would dance, and twist his shoulders,” said his mother, Sandra Boyce, who is 69 and lives in Harlem. Al. B., whose real name was Albert Boyce, died in 2006 at 43. He spent much of his life dancing, his mother said, “to every rhythm, and every beat, and every song,” and he created his own popular style at the park. “The Al. B. from there,” she said, “became the Harlem Shake.”