Around the world, there has been an outbreak of teenagers posting videos of themselves dancing crazily. This craze is called the Harlem Shake. This dance used to be known as the “Albee” because the dance was introduced in 1981 by “Al B” who resided in Harlem. It became more commonly known as the Harlem Shake as the dance moved outside the neighborhood. The Harlem Shake became mainstream when G. Dep featured the dance in his 2001 music video for “Let’s Get It.”
If you haven’t watched a Harlem Shake video, I’ll sum it up for you. The video starts with a single person thrusting their pelvis as the song builds. Then right when the bass drops, you see many different people dancing around in the most ridiculous ways; many videos feature the dancers in crazy costumes. This continues for about 30 seconds of the song ‘Harlem Shake’ by Baauer.
Recently, it has become an internet craze with people all over the world creating these videos and posting them to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Celebrities have even created videos like NBA’s Miami Heat.
Some students at JHS, such as senior Aaron Vasquez, have even started making these videos to post on social networking sites.
Vasquez had seen a video of his friends in Arizona about a month ago and thought it was hysterical. So he decided he wanted to create something that would make others laugh. He got a group of his friends together on a snow day and spent an hour creating the video and putting it together. Later, he uploaded the video to Facebook and realized it had gotten over 60 likes in less than an hour.