Tenille Dashwood On Who Created The Emma Dance, Working With Santino Marella In WWE

During her time in WWE, Tenille Dashwood had various gimmicks from being Santino Marella's sidekick as Emma to the short-lived Emmalina and then back to Emma. While aligned with Marella, Emma had her infamous "Emma dance" that became her signature move and is what people may most remember about her.

She talked about who created the dance when she was interviewed by Chris Van Vliet.

"It was me along with Byron Saxton actually at the time and it was when Dusty was?we were all at FCW and I picked this new music. At the time, the music that we used was that music but I was like, 'This is very strange almost like a little alien-like?' So I was like 'What do I do? I have to do something when I come out, I can't just walk out.' So I ended up doing this weird thing with my hands and they were like, 'Don't do that but maybe a little more like this' and we kind of adjusted it, and I just kind of kept trying it and trying it and it evolved from that," said Dashwood.

"The NXT crowds were and still are awesome like that where you're like their own product basically. They kind of just caught on and grew with me so before long the whole crowd would be doing the dance with me. It just made it so much more fun because I didn't feel like an idiot anymore."

After making the dance famous while in NXT, Dashwood then moved to the main roster where she was paired with Marella. The pairing last for about six months before ending when Marella retired from the ring.

Dashwood discussed how it all came about and what it was like working with Marella.

"It was first presented to me at NXT and I'd been doing this hand dancing. I'd been doing the ditzy Emma and I think Triple H at the time just had this thought 'Santino and Emma,' he just had this idea," recalled Dashwood. "At the time, he put us in a match with Summer Rae and Fandango at NXT. I remember the crowd went nuts, it was one of the funniest moments of my career. Santino just cracks me up, he's honestly one of the funniest people I've ever met. I just remember we kind of clicked straight away. He looked at me and was like 'Oh you do this, let's do this' and then I was like 'Okay!' He was great kind of leading me along, just hilarious. We just kind of meshed so I think from that Triple H was like 'Yep, it worked' and literally a few months later it was a thing on RAW."