I wonder what the first RPG was to go "Dancer should be a character class." Was it Dragon Quest IV? Was there some tabletop game or blobber that included it first?
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in reply to @Clouder's post:
https://archive.org/details/the-complete-bards-handbook there's a (pardon me) "gypsy-bard" kit in the ad&d 2e complete bard's handbook with an emphasis on dancing (among a predictable slew of stereotypes). it's not a full dancer class, but i do think it's a forerunner for some enduring ideas about rpg dancers.. i feel like a lot of rpg dancer aesthetics are drawing, directly or indirectly, on popular images of middle eastern dance - mara from dq4 most obviously, but even less nakedly orientalist ones like you see in (say) fire emblem feel like they derive from the same place
d&d bards feel like a good guess for where dancer class originated conceptually, regardless of any attempts to codify it i bet lots of folks had the thought "what if my bard performed dance instead of song". bard and dancer are so often positioned as mechanical counterparts, i have to imagine their histories are linked in some way
That's probably on-point. My guess is a lot of it was just pulling from common tropes in the air in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, then doing what you suggest and attaching them to the most common class/archetype that makes sense for the role. The same instinct that led multiple people I've met to try and recreate Link from Zelda as a D&D ranger or fighter/mage. That just promulgated outward into larger media and codified tropes around Dancer characters (belly dancer outfits, using fans as weapons, etc.).