Dirty Dancing: What is the Harlem Shake and why it's not just a joke. Shake online publication "element of dance"
Dance dictionary Back
Shake
Shake-Shake - once popular dancers called. Incendiary dance The shake appeared in 1964. It was then that the Beatles hit of the same name was released.
Sheik replaced Twist and became the responsible successor. He was just as fiery, lively and energetic. It firmly captured the bodies of young people, who recognized it as almost the only dance worthy of attention.
Our mothers and fathers obediently shook their bodies to rhythms that were impossible to sit through. By the way, shake translated from English means “shaking.”
Musical time signature dance - 2/4 or 4/4. There are no strict restrictions on the pace - it can be fast or slow. Sheik is encouraged to be performed not only in pairs, but also in small groups where the dancers face each other.
Having emerged as an everyday dance, the shake quickly gained well-deserved popularity and became one of the modern ballroom dancing Great Britain. The neck is characterized by specific movements of the shoulders and body. The main movement is swaying the body due to strong contractions of the abdominal muscles. At the moment of tension in the press, the shoulders move a little forward. All this must be coordinated and implemented not discordantly, but holistically. This same contraction sets the rhythm of the movement of the legs, which move approximately the same throughout the dance: transferring support from one leg to the other. In general, nothing hinders the movements of the hands - you can work with them at your own discretion.
It is probably difficult to come up with such a description of this eccentric pair dance, which could convey the amazing mood and genuine fun experienced by the sheik performers. Sheik will not let anyone who finds himself in power get bored sounding music and in a circle of annealing couples.
Free dancing began with the advent of the shake in 1965. The success of this dance can only be compared to the success of the twist. Our mothers and fathers were so keen on it that all other dances seemed hopelessly outdated to them. Let's try to master this dance too.
History of appearance
In 1964, the Beatles performed their hit “Hippie Hippie Shake,” which became incredibly popular. Around the same time, a dance appeared, which was immediately called a shake after the name of this hit and from English word"shake". The dance quickly spread to many countries around the world. The dancers presented to the audience a new, interesting, dynamic and incendiary dance program, which included elements of strip plastic, Latin, oriental dance belly and other dances.Shake Basics
The musical time signature of the shake is 4/4 or 2/4. The shake can be performed at two tempos: slow – “one”, “two”, “three”, “four” and fast – “one-and”, “two-and”. This dance can also be performed in small groups, forming circles, or in pairs face to face.Main movement in the cervix
The main movement is considered to be the movement of the body, which sways due to strong contractions of the abdominal muscles, as if you want to avoid a blow to the solar plexus. This movement should be consistent with the movement of the shoulders, which move slightly forward as the abdominal muscles contract. On the other hand, the hips, knees and ankles move in accordance with the contraction or relaxation of the abdominal wall muscles.Movements of legs and arms
Movements of the legs in the neck are a sequential alternation of a step with support on the leg and a step without support on it. In addition, when leaning on the left leg, the dancer turns his body slightly to the right, and when leaning on right leg– to the left. The arms are bent at the elbows, the forearms are raised, however, the movements of the arms are very free.It took Internet folklore only a couple of months to find a replacement for the tired Gangnam Style dance. The name of the new phenomenon is the Harlem Shake, and at first glance this is a story worthy of nothing more than a couple of minutes of laughter, but it’s high time to take it for granted that nothing in modern world cannot do without a real or imagined second bottom. Look At Me delves into the history of the meme and tries to understand what it all means.
Text: Oleg Baranov
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On February 2, 2013, Japanese video blogger Filthy Frank posted the same video on YouTube. In it, four Australian students in strange multi-colored costumes dance to a short excerpt from the track Harlem Shake Brooklyn producer Baauer - a client of the Mad Decent label and not last man in modern trap EDM. Well, so what, it would seem, is this. A lot of things: in two weeks, the original video alone was watched more than 10 million times, which is the number of all existing parodies - it’s hard to imagine, but they say it’s something like 200 million. The parodies mentioned above - allowing the Harlem Shake to be seen as a meme - slightly transformed the original idea. The action in them takes place to the same music, but it is dictated by a clear script - at first, of all those present in the frame, only one person dances (and looks strange), and after the phrase “Do the Harlem shake” and the accompanying drop, they dance (and look strange) everyone starts, and these “everyone” become, as a rule, several times larger due to one editing gluing. |
The video has been watched more than 10 million times, parodies are hard to imagine, but they say something like 200 million
In the early eighties, a new dance style- Harlem Shake, apparently invented by Al B, a typical city dweller for the time and place. In 2003, the album Thug Paradise 2.1 by Plastic Little was released, it included the song Miller Time, and in it the phrase “Do the Harlem shake”. The last one is the end real story about how one of the Plastic Little members had their first serious fight and, having won, danced the Harlem Shake. In 2012, Baauer used a sample from Miller Time in guess what track. And then there were videos. What does the last link - the YouTube meme - have to do with Al B's original dance? Of course, none.
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Baauer - Harlem Shake |
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The dancing in numerous viral videos is a simple illustration of what would happen if you asked the average computer user to do something wild to the music. Shake your head, wave your arms, pretend that you are fucking something inflatable or, more often, imaginary. Next question- how does this relate to the author of the music, to Baauer, that is. At first there was no connection - his track was simply played in the guys’ room with a video camera. Now Bauuer receives money for almost every view of every “Harlemshake”, and the track itself is in the top three on iTunes on both sides of the ocean. And his success (there is no other way to describe it) is, in general, a matter of chance. Viral marketing that started and works on its own. It works, and quite well in an unusual way. So, a few days ago it turned out that Baauer and Azealia Banks worked together on a remix of Harlem Shake, over which Banks recited several of her own verses, and, frankly speaking, the author of the composition did not like them. This did not stop the rapper and the result can already be seen online. It’s quite difficult to perceive this clip after watching hundreds of short humorous songs on the same topic, but here the original soundtrack at least has a role that does not rhyme with the word “funny.” As for the truly popular component of the Harlem Shake phenomenon, it is perhaps worth recognizing that with music in in the usual sense she has very little in common. More - with a sphere modern technologies and with life in general. The distribution mechanics of the new dance meme are similar to those of jokes about the Chukchi. But the essence of this intersection is not only in the playful distortion of a successful form, but (and to a greater extent, perhaps) also in the formation of stereotypes about a specific area that correspond to the spirit of the times. Say the word “Harlem” ten years ago, or even a month ago, and you will encounter ideas about this area as the epicenter of the “black” danger, a place where you can kill for a sideways glance. In reality, this is, of course, an exaggeration, and the film New Jack City is, frankly speaking, not a CNN report. But what has been associated with Harlem in the last few days and will definitely not leave our minds for some time is something worse than Russian bears. Norwegian soldiers, American swimmers and many, many office workers- here it is, Harlem on the Internet. |
Let's briefly return to 2012: all of the above plus Nikita Dzhigurda are dancing fashionable dance Gangnam Style. We won’t go into its details, let’s just say that it and Harlem Shake are not very similar names (and in a sense glorify geographical features), and they also seem to be two parts of one film or, better said, a game. In the first there is one character, high quality renditions of the original, imitators of all stripes and global triumph. In the second there are many heroes (and all of them are the main ones), a much more experimental approach (but respecting the genre), ease of reproduction. We dare to note that to dance Gangnam Style means to cross a rather serious psychological barrier, for Harlem Shake you only need good company(and not always).
To dance Gangnam Style means to cross a rather serious psychological barrier; the Harlem Shake only requires good company
The main advantage of HS over GS is its main seemingly disadvantage, namely poor production, transferred to another plane, the plane of carnal intoxication. Can a phenomenon involving hundreds of millions of people be called underground? big question, but from the point of view of production technology, the Harlem Shake falls into this category - and grows without leaving it. And his deliberate animality can be repulsive, but it’s still much easier to be charmed by it. Thinking for a long time about whether you like it all or not is like being six years old and wondering whether you should even ride down the hill on a cardboard.
From context funny videos It's worth returning to the context of the music to understand why the Harlem Shake is not just an interesting story, but also a useful one. The explosion in popularity of the Baauer track is most notable for the fact that, although it was not planned, the totality of its details could be included in textbooks or at least in various kinds of inspiring books for modern musicians. A young and moderately talented guy walked along known path phased development and until February was forced to mainly entertain clubs for a thousand people. Now, in this sense, anything can happen, and Baauer's potential is certainly no lower than PSY's potential a year ago - adjusted, of course, for the genre. Only PSY and his team long and diligently produced their “meme of the millennium”, and a simple Brooklyn guy Baauer sat at home, composed a track a day just to get his teeth in, and look what happened.
