Get ready to enter the world of
DIGITAL DANCE OLUTHANDO KETEYI
ONE thing about the pandemic is that it connected people, and viral challenges on platforms such as TikTok had many entertained. The viral challenges put a fun twist on the unprecedented times we were living in and no one seemed to be left behind. As with most things during the pandemic, the digital dance world saw a dramatic shift that changed the culture and solidified many of the trends that had been shifting
CIARA’S hit song, Level Up is behind the viral challenge done by millions of people around the world.
on the sidelines well before March 2020. Seeing this, dance scholars Harmony Bench and Alexandra Harlig guest-edited a special issue of The Journal of Screendance that responded to the nuanced ways the pandemic has shifted the ways we engage with dance on digital media. In the journal, This Is Where We Dance Now: Covid-19 and the New and Next in Dance Onscreen, Bench and Harlig note, “Activities once on the sidelines of the
dance field are the new normal: teaching technique on Zoom, holding online dance film festivals, DJing house parties on Instagram, streaming archival performance documentation, making TikToks.” Take a look at some of the TikTok dancer fitness challenges that went viral: Ab Dance The “dance” – which is really just the act of thrusting your hips back and forth, in a crunch-like motion, vigorously to the beat
