AND.....There were a ton of dances prior to or concurrent with The Twist where partners never or rarely touched. The Hully Gully. The Watusi. The Jerk. The Fly. The Mashed Potato. These were all early sixties and even before that in the 50's the dances were mainly variants of jitterbug and lindy hop where there wasn't a lot of touching except for spinning and tossing...LOL.
Some other were line dances or other variants of the Cha-Cha or the ubiquitous Stroll. Chubby just had another dance that caught on big. Nothing remarkable or innovative..........