The viral “Jerusalema” dance craze is just one way that we use collective ritual to sustain us during a pandemic
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”, is a famous misquote from the anarchist Emma Goldman (though it captures the gist of what she did actually say, which is at the end of this blog).
Yet it’s properly taken up by activists as a caution against joyless Puritanism in the course of the “struggle”. If a joyous, sensual and unalienated life is only a far off goal, and not achievable in any way before the great overturning, then how do we stay motivated to get there?
Here, we like to also think if it this way: If you actually are dancing, what part of the (friendly) revolution are you already involved in? We have kept tabs on innovators who establish relationships between dance and democratic innovation over the years. Take the Berlin dance clubs that bridged the Wall, or dance as a social prescription from doctors, or the way that children in communities globally can defy their deprivation by sharing dance techniques.
We’ve been waiting for our dance ritual for the Covid era - given that there seems to have been a social media evolved for exactly that in Tik Tok (see this article on Tik Tok’s choreographers triggering dance crazes).
And here it comes… the Jerursalema (see the YouTube embed at the top of the post). According to ITV news:
Devised in Angola, a single dance craze has swept the globe and given us something to smile about during the pandemic.
Jerusalema is a song by South African house musician Master KG. Friends in Angola filmed themselves dancing to the hit - the moves have since been recreated the world over. From health workers to nuns to children, everyone is getting involved.
When the Swiss Police took up the challenge, it sparked a virtual dance-off with the Irish Garda.
More from the Wikipedia entry:
An accompanying dance challenge, attributed to a group of Angolan friends performing the choreography in a candid video,[9] helped the song go viral online.[15]
The #JerusalemaChallenge, which has been compared to the Macarena,[16] spawned dance videos from across many countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Romania, Spain, France, Jamaica, Canada, the United States and Palestine, including in Jerusalem itself.[6][13][17]
In Germany, workers paid tribute to Berlin’s Tegel Airport by dancing to Jerusalema on the tarmac and in the now-shuttered terminal.[18][19] The Swiss Federal Office of Police challenged the Irish Garda Síochána to the Jerusalema dance challenge, which they accepted. The video was well received in the two countries with the Swiss police flying Irish flag at their headquarters for the day.[20]
The Guardian reported late last year on five pandemic dance videos, including the Jerusalema, that had become contagious due both to Covid and social media. For example, the Dance Theatre of Harlem taking to the streets, below, and then Dr Arup Senapati - an ENT surgeon at Silchar medical college Assam - danced to the Indian hit Ghungroo in front of Coronavirus patients, to “keep morale up”.
If I can’t dance… What Emma Goldman actually said:
”At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
“I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.
“I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world–prisons, persecution, everything.
“Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal”. [Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56]