{"id":63483,"date":"2015-10-23T05:04:39","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T10:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=63483"},"modified":"2015-10-23T05:04:39","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T10:04:39","slug":"drakes-hotline-bling-dance-moves-applauded-by-choreographers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/10\/23\/drakes-hotline-bling-dance-moves-applauded-by-choreographers\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake\u2019s \u2018Hotline Bling\u2019 dance moves applauded by choreographers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Drake<\/a>
Drake (Screengrab from Drake’s footage)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2013 From Carlton Banks to Marvin Gaye and someone who\u2019s stubbed his toe, Toronto rapper Drake is sparking scores of comparisons, parodies and memes with his shimmy-shuffle slow grooves in his new video for the earworm \u201cHotline Bling.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what do the dance experts think?<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung man can dance and he\u2019s got some groove in his system,\u201d says renowned choreographer Tre Armstrong, who was a judge on \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about vibe and groove for him. It’s not about choreography, so people need to stop trippin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melissa Nascimento-So, youth program director at City Dance Corps in Toronto, applauds Drake for putting himself out there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looks like he\u2019s having a great time,\u201d she says, \u201cand really, that\u2019s what dance is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video, which debuted on Apple Music on Monday night, begins with a shot of curvaceous women working in a call centre.<\/p>\n

It then cuts to a dancing Drake (whose real name is Aubrey Graham) in an illuminated box on a minimalistic set, clad in a blood orange puffer jacket, light blue jeans and camel-coloured Timberland Boots.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou used to call me on my cellphone,\u201d he sings as he slowly rotates his torso into hunched-over and upright positions, doing what appears to be a two-step\/salsa\/shimmy fusion with animated tai-chi-esque arm movements.<\/p>\n

More body rolls, deep-knee bends and arm gestures follow as we see the 28-year-old in various outfits, often putting his hand in the shape of a phone and swirling it at the side of his head as he sings the chorus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really applaud Drake for just having fun with it and just vibing out and doing his thing,\u201d said Aaron Libfeld, a partner at The Underground Dance Centre in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he was just channeling however the song made him feel and I think he was just expressing how he felt in his movements. It\u2019s really nice to see a rapper go out there and actually do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was really bold of him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video has caused a frenzy online, with countless Vine parodies, articles and several Twitter accounts dedicated to it. There have also been comparisons to The Carlton, the dorky dance by Alfonso Ribeiro\u2019s character on \u201cThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the actual hell were you doing there?\u201d said \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d host Trevor Noah on Tuesday\u2019s show. \u201cWhat are those dance moves?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re holding every single mixed-race person back. Do you know how hard we\u2019ve worked to be called \u2018black\u2019 and then you do this to us, Drake? You\u2019re going to get our black status revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nascimento-So felt Drake was channelling a few different styles.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarvin Gaye, Bollywood, a Latin flair. He still has this kind of urban look to him and bounce as well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest dance moves come out of fusion, so maybe that\u2019s what he was going for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armstrong loved a couple of particular moves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was the hand jook. He has this thing where he puts his hands down on an ankle. I thought that was fresh. And then he has the pelvic pop, the pelvic thrust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nascimento-So said she was surprised by the video, noting \u201cwe\u2019ve never seen him move this much.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she added, \u201cDrake does come from an acting background and we know that he\u2019s already funny and a bit of comedian, so I wasn\u2019t surprised in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully he stretched before all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the mockery, the experts think his interpretive moves are inspirational.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about just having fun, loving life, enjoying the music that you\u2019re listening to and moving freely to it, so good on him for doing that,\u201d said Nascimento-So.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if we see people mimicking this movement at parties, at clubs, in dance studios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Libfeld said it may \u201cencourage people to be playful, have a good time and just move however they\u2019re feeling and how the music makes them feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we\u2019ll take the most from this is to show people, \u2018Listen, just do yourself, do you. Have fun, be playful and vibe out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2013 From Carlton Banks to Marvin Gaye and someone who\u2019s stubbed his toe, Toronto rapper Drake is sparking scores …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-63483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-original","mauthors-victoria-ahearn","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}