The dancing styles originated in the early soul clubs of the north during the 60's.
The soul music preferred was faster, more upbeat soul than the type of soul listened to mainly in the south.
It's the reason why the term Northern Soul was coined.
The faster uptempo music led to some pretty fancy footwork including spins.
It's pretty unique to Northern Soul that the dancers dance alone. In other words they won't dance with a partner like a girlfriend or a mate for example.
During the 70's at places like Wigan Casino the dance styles included back drops, back flips and all manner of gymnastics. The kung fu craze of the 70's (Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris etc) crept in to the styles (I'm not joking) and the dancers began to compete with each other.
Keb Darge still doing it after all those years.
And here he is, younger, trying his hand at a bit of disco
You can see the martial arts influence.
I've seen guys take three steps, go into a double spin, do some kind of weird body corkscrew that ends in the splits, slide their legs together to a standing position and immediately pull a back drop, back up onto their feet and carry on stepping like nothing just happened.