How I Got Infected … with the Jerusalema Dance Craze
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHZN7orGzU
I was infected a couple weeks ago — not with the coronavirus, but with the Jerusalema dance craze that’s proliferating around the world. South African record producer and DJ Master KG created the infectious house song Jerusalema last fall, and singer Nomcebo Zikode wrote the gospel-themed lyrics in Zulu. To their astonishment, the song spread faster than the virus and has ignited a global dance dance-off: #jerusalemadancechallenge. Videos across YouTube show everyone from nuns and priests in Italy to hospital workers in Sweden performing the Jerusalema line dance with joy. People are dancing in parking lots, in public squares, even at a Zimbabwe wildlife preserve with elephants and giraffes.
I first encountered Jerusalema through a Facebook video of kids in Africa dancing to it, shared by Defected Records, a UK record label. I fell in love with the song but it wasn’t credited, so I Shazamed it, not knowing Jerusalema was at that time the №1 most Shazamed song in the world. I quickly fell down the rabbit hole of watching YouTube videos of people dancing to it across our planet. A couple hours later, I was up in my bedroom learning the steps from a homemade YouTube instructional video.
Master KG, whose real name is Kgaogelo Moagi and who was born in Limpopo, told the publication Sowetan Live: “I didn’t set out to be praised or win awards, all I wanted was to make music and entertain people.” Nomcebo, a backup singer for 15 years searching for a break, wrote the lyrics during one of the darkest times in her life. She was suicidal and about to give up on music because of so much failure. “Master KG played the beat three or four times, and the words that came to mind were ‘Jerusalema, ikhaya lami (Jerusalem in my home),’ ” she told Times Live, a South African news website. “At the time I felt like my purpose was not on this earth and God need (sic) to take me to Jerusalem, where I can find peace and happiness, like others.”
The dance-off started when an Angolan dance company choreographed a quirky routine to the song that went viral. In it, they dance while casually eating plates of food. A remix of the song by Nigerian singer Burna Boy also boosted its popularity. Last month, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa encouraged citizens to take up the Jerusalema dance challenge on the country’s Heritage Day, a public holiday.
I think the world is Jerusalema-dance-crazy right now because during the pandemic, or during anything traumatic, you can only try and think yourself out of fear and stress for so long. Then you need something else. “To dance is to be out of yourself,” the late dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille has been quoted as saying. “Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth, and it is yours for the taking.”
I’m not a professional dancer — I wish — but an amateur one: first ballet, then ballroom, then salsa and swing, now tango. We look like regular people — us adult nonprofessional dancers — but we’re not. We are the ones who dance down the hallways at the office when no one else is there on the weekend. We are the ones who think Patrick Swayze’s best line in the movie Dirty Dancing is not “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” but when, as he teaches Jennifer Gray the mambo, he says, “The steps aren’t enough. Feel the music.“
For decades I and many others have found relief during tough times in tiny, almost always financially struggling dance studios with worn wood floors. We spend hours trying to master steps, combinations, alignment, knowing we never will. With dance, you are assured of constant failure, but go from one step to the next anyway, with as much courage, dignity and equanimity as you can.
Today my tango class was held in a school yard next to a jungle gym. It was a chilly fall morning with yellow leaves scattered on the ground. We took our places on a patch of concrete, aligning with the faded white lines painted for games of foursquare. Our teacher, Nataliya, reminded us, “In tango, the dance happens between the steps.” It is our creativity, our choices that turn motion into art. The steps aren’t enough. Also, you are creating something, however ephemeral, not only for yourself, but for and with the other dancers. In every Jerusalema dance video, from Sweden to Russia you see not only the beauty of self-expression, but our shared humanity. With the pandemic, we are between the beats and will be for a while. The challenge, and it’s not easy, is finding a way to find our center, again and again.
