On 8 March 2023, 5 teenage women uploaded on social media a video of themselves performing the Calm Down Dance Problem. That is the choreography for the primary verse of the Afrobeats hit Calm Down by Nigerian singer Rema (Divine Ikubor).
The women had been following individuals internationally who’ve made this dance problem go viral for over a 12 months by importing movies of themselves dancing to it. With one distinction, although: they had been dancing in Iran, the place it’s forbidden to bounce in public, particularly with out the obligatory headscarves for ladies.
By 10 March, the 40-second video had gained sufficient notoriety for the dancers to be rounded up by authorities and made to apologise publicly. However the genie was out of the bottle. Their video remains to be circulating throughout social media.
They’re the most recent in an escalating sequence of challenges to the Islamic Republic of Iran, rippling outwards from the dying in custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The Iranian girl was arrested for refusing to put on the scarf within the prescribed method.
Six months later, Iranian women are nonetheless protesting – however now via a tune by an African singer and a dance routine by an African dancer.
A successful mixture of music, motion and expertise could make dance routines go viral. This was seen, for instance, in the course of the COVID pandemic with the South African music and Angolan choreography to the hit tune Jerusalema by Grasp KG.
In common tradition singers are identified by title, however dancers largely stay unacknowledged. So who first dreamt up the Calm Down dance that has catapulted from microblogging fame to joyous defiance of a notoriously repressive regime?
The choreography
On 7 March 2022 the now-famous choreography for Calm Down first appeared on the TikTok deal with Loïc Reyeltv. The poster was Cameroon-born, Montreal-based Loïc Ngumele Sipeyou, identified professionally as Loïc Reyel. He’s the founding director of Afro Vybz dance faculty and within the video he’s dancing with 5 college students.
Their brief routine coordinates expressive hand gestures with footwork drawn from African road dance kinds that globally flow into via academics equivalent to Loïc. Assume Ivorian coupé-decalé, Nigerian shoki, Ghanaian azonto, Angolan kuduro … These native responses to pan-African digital music consistently mix with Caribbean and African American dance kinds to recollect and resist the traumas of enslavement, colonialism and policing of the Black physique.
Loïc used these wealthy sources to interpret a tune that had been launched lower than a month earlier on Rema’s debut studio album Rave and Roses.
In a telephone dialog with me, as a part of my ongoing analysis into West African dance varieties, Loïc described it as “a very simple tune” he “felt instantly related with” and will “actually transfer to”.
As Calm Down started topping European charts, Loïc’s kinetic response started attracting social media customers worldwide. His dance problem video has, thus far, 215,000 likes and 10,500 shares.
Loïc’s video is not only shared; numerous individuals of all ages and nationalities study his steps, document their performances and add them on social media. From Pakistan to Kenya and now Iran, in solo, couple and group codecs, in salwars and sweatpants, hoodies and baseball caps, by hijab-wearers and hijab-rejectors, the movies preserve coming – as this TikTok compilation reveals. A remixed duet model between Rema and US singer Selena Gomez gave the tune a second peak in September 2022. In the meantime, Loïc’s dance problem continues to captivate globally.
The tune
This magic arises from Rema’s vocal supply. His melodic genius transforms the favored B main key with a posh development of chords. The lyrics twist collectively the recognisable and near-indecipherable. Within the tune phrases and phrases like “vibes”, “settle down” and “lockdown” meet the syntax and vocabulary of Nigerian pidgin (“no dey do yanga” and Jamaican dancehall (“shawty”). The fizzy drink Fanta is crafted into an evocative picture of desirability (“lady you candy like Fanta-ooh”). The tune pours out like chilled Fanta effervescent up with the unforgettable “lo-lo-lo-lo-ve-ve-ve-ve-ve”. Its laid again method decolonises the English language, releasing it for the world to make use of.
Rema’s official video elevated the tune’s attraction by visualising its storyline. His pursuit of a “scorching but humble” lady in her yellow costume attracts viewers into city Africa’s interiors and streetscapes. Its plotline is common: a pair struggling to emerge from a gaggle. Loïc’s choreography enhances this story. Its hand gestures carry out the meanings swirling across the phrases. On the similar time, legs, waist and pelvis spell out one other story: the transformation of African kinetic (motion) codes into road dance kinds that grew to become the weaponry of dispossessed youth across the Afro-Atlantic rim.
Dance of pleasure
Says Loïc:
It doesn’t matter what our individuals went via previously, we’re at all times capable of dance with pleasure.
The physique’s alegropolitics – its capability to activate reminiscences of enjoyment in addition to trauma by creolising (bringing collectively) a number of cultural strands – characterises each Rema’s tune and Loïc’s choreography. This enhances their interplay in addition to, in Loïc’s phrases, the dance problem’s “superb success”. Its unstoppable reputation illustrates what ethnomusicologist Elina Djebbari calls videochoreomorphosis: the processes by which dance, utilizing the physique, stays significant within the digital age via dancers’ modern interplay with the music video format.
Learn extra: The Angolan dancers who helped South African anthem Jerusalema go international
In responding to Loïc’s problem, the Iranian women equally remake themselves via video. Flamboyantly rejecting cultural isolation for kinetic cosmopolitanism, they step right into a dynamic international tradition as its lively contributors. They flawlessly reproduce the typically tough choreography they usually add a particular closing word: a spectacular booty shimmy. This runs counter to Islamic-influenced codes of feminine propriety however attracts on the sacred “ontology of the twerk” in Africanist motion cultures.
Dreaming collectively for freedom
“Dance is freedom,” says Loïc, whereas acknowledging that these culturally coded strikes are sometimes misinterpreted by non-Africans as sexualised. The Iranian women sense the ability of such ambivalence. Wanting again whereas shimmying, and ending with a flamboyant kick in the direction of the lens in basic Afrobeat fashion, they shift the established order.
They dance within the large city jungle of Ekbatan, a housing mission in-built Tehran in the course of the Seventies. Within the midst of brutalist concrete, hopes blossom via unpredictable confederations.
Rema lately despatched a message in response to the video by the 5 women:
To all the gorgeous ladies who’re combating for a greater world, I’m impressed by you, I sing for you, and I dream with you.
For Loïc, in the intervening time, the Iranian dancers have confirmed his goal in life: “to alter the world via African dance. I’m nearer to my purpose.”
With because of Loïc Reyel, Francesca Negro and Elina Djebbari
This text is republished from The Dialog, a nonprofit information web site devoted to sharing concepts from tutorial consultants. The Dialog is reliable information from consultants. Attempt our free newsletters.
It was written by: Ananya Jahanara Kabir, King’s School London.
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Ananya Jahanara Kabir is Professor of English Literature at King’s School London. The analysis underlying this text has been funded by the European Analysis Council and The British Academy.
