The girls were following people across the world who\u2019ve made this dance challenge go viral for over a year by uploading videos of themselves dancing to it. With one difference, though: they were dancing in Iran, where it is forbidden to dance in public, especially without the mandatory headscarves for women.<\/p>\n
By 10 March, the 40-second video had gained enough notoriety for the dancers to be rounded up by authorities and made to apologise publicly. But the genie was out of the bottle. Their video is still circulating across social media.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re the latest in an escalating series of challenges to the Islamic Republic of Iran, rippling outwards from the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The Iranian woman was arrested for refusing to wear the headscarf in the prescribed manner.<\/p>\n
Six months later, Iranian girls are still protesting \u2013 but now through a song by an African singer and a dance routine by an African dancer.<\/p>\n
A winning combination of music, movement and technology can make dance routines go viral. This was seen, for example, during the COVID pandemic with the South African music and Angolan choreography to the hit song Jerusalema by Master KG.<\/p>\n
In popular culture singers are known by name, but dancers largely remain unacknowledged. So who first dreamt up the Calm Down dance that has catapulted from microblogging fame to joyous defiance of a notoriously repressive regime?<\/p>\n
The choreography
\nOn 7 March 2022 the now-famous choreography for Calm Down first appeared on the TikTok handle Lo\u00efc Reyeltv. The poster was Cameroon-born, Montreal-based Lo\u00efc Ngumele Sipeyou, known professionally as Lo\u00efc Reyel. He\u2019s the founding director of Afro Vybz dance school and in the video he\u2019s dancing with five students.<\/p>\n
Their short routine coordinates expressive hand gestures with footwork drawn from African street dance styles that globally circulate through teachers such as Lo\u00efc. Think Ivorian coup\u00e9-decal\u00e9, Nigerian shoki, Ghanaian azonto, Angolan kuduro \u2026 These local responses to pan-African electronic music constantly combine with Caribbean and African American dance styles to remember and resist the traumas of enslavement, colonialism and policing of the Black body.<\/p>\n
Lo\u00efc used these rich resources to interpret a song that had been released less than a month earlier on Rema\u2019s debut studio album Rave and Roses.<\/p>\n
In a phone conversation with me, as part of my ongoing research into West African dance forms, Lo\u00efc described it as \u201ca very easy song\u201d he \u201cfelt immediately connected with\u201d and could \u201creally move to\u201d.<\/p>\n
As Calm Down began topping European charts, Lo\u00efc\u2019s kinetic response began attracting social media users worldwide. His dance challenge video has, to date, 215,000 likes and 10,500 shares.<\/p>\n
Lo\u00efc\u2019s video is not just shared; countless people of all ages and nationalities learn his steps, record their performances and upload them on social media. From Pakistan to Kenya and now Iran, in solo, couple and group formats, in salwars and sweatpants, hoodies and baseball caps, by hijab-wearers and hijab-rejectors, the videos keep coming \u2013 as this TikTok compilation shows. A remixed duet version between Rema and US singer Selena Gomez gave the song a second peak in September 2022. Meanwhile, Lo\u00efc\u2019s dance challenge continues to captivate globally.<\/p>\n
The song
\nThis magic arises from Rema\u2019s vocal delivery. His melodic genius transforms the popular B major key with a complex progression of chords. The lyrics twist together the recognisable and near-indecipherable. In the song words and phrases like \u201cvibes\u201d, \u201ccalm down\u201d and \u201clockdown\u201d meet the syntax and vocabulary of Nigerian pidgin (\u201cno dey do yanga\u201d and Jamaican dancehall (\u201cshawty\u201d). The fizzy drink Fanta is crafted into an evocative image of desirability (\u201cgirl you sweet like Fanta-ooh\u201d). The song pours out like chilled Fanta bubbling up with the unforgettable \u201clo-lo-lo-lo-ve-ve-ve-ve-ve\u201d. Its laid back approach decolonises the English language, releasing it for the world to use.<\/p>\n
Rema\u2019s official video increased the song\u2019s appeal by visualising its storyline. His pursuit of a \u201chot yet humble\u201d girl in her yellow dress draws viewers into urban Africa\u2019s interiors and streetscapes. Its plotline is universal: a couple struggling to emerge from a group. Lo\u00efc\u2019s choreography enhances this story. Its hand gestures bring out the meanings swirling around the words. At the same time, legs, waist and pelvis spell out another story: the transformation of African kinetic (movement) codes into street dance styles that became the weaponry of dispossessed youth around the Afro-Atlantic rim.<\/p>\n
Dance of joy
\nSays Lo\u00efc:<\/p>\n
No matter what our people went through in the past, we are always able to dance with joy.<\/p>\n
The body\u2019s alegropolitics \u2013 its capacity to activate memories of enjoyment as well as trauma by creolising (bringing together) multiple cultural strands \u2013 characterises both Rema\u2019s song and Lo\u00efc\u2019s choreography. This enhances their interaction as well as, in Lo\u00efc\u2019s words, the dance challenge\u2019s \u201camazing success\u201d. Its unstoppable popularity illustrates what ethnomusicologist Elina Djebbari calls videochoreomorphosis: the processes by which dance, using the body, remains meaningful in the digital age through dancers\u2019 innovative interaction with the music video format.<\/p>\n
In responding to Lo\u00efc\u2019s challenge, the Iranian girls similarly remake themselves through video. Flamboyantly rejecting cultural isolation for kinetic cosmopolitanism, they step into a dynamic global culture as its active contributors. They flawlessly reproduce the sometimes tricky choreography and they add a special closing note: a spectacular booty shimmy. This runs counter to Islamic-influenced codes of female propriety but draws on the sacred \u201contology of the twerk\u201d in Africanist movement cultures.<\/p>\n
Dreaming together for freedom
\n\u201cDance is freedom,\u201d says Lo\u00efc, while acknowledging that these culturally coded moves are often misinterpreted by non-Africans as sexualised. The Iranian girls sense the power of such ambivalence. Looking back while shimmying, and ending with a flamboyant kick towards the lens in classic Afrobeat style, they shift the status quo.<\/p>\n
They dance in the massive urban jungle of Ekbatan, a housing project built in Tehran during the 1970s. In the midst of brutalist concrete, hopes blossom through unpredictable confederations.<\/p>\n
Rema recently sent a message in response to the video by the five girls:<\/p>\n
To all the beautiful women who are fighting for a better world, I\u2019m inspired by you, I sing for you, and I dream with you.<\/p>\n
For Lo\u00efc, in the meanwhile, the Iranian dancers have confirmed his purpose in life: \u201cto change the world through African dance. I\u2019m closer to my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 8 March 2023, five teenage girls uploaded on social media a video of themselves performing the Calm Down Dance Challenge. This is the choreography for the first verse of the Afrobeats hit Calm Down by Nigerian singer Rema (Divine Ikubor).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":27921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-27924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n