About
The Harlem Shake is a series of satirical videos parodying the Harlem Shake dance, set to the tune of New-York based musician Baauer’s song ‘Harlem Shake’. These videos tend to initially show a lone masked individual dancing while other around him show indifference to the act, before cutting quickly to a scene of everyone doing assorted viral dance crazes once the song’s chorus starts. These typically include dances such as the Bernie, twerking, krumping, and several other forms of stereotypical urban dance.
Origin & Spread
The Harlem Shake first came into being in 1981, and 20 years later achieved greater levels of popularity after being featured in several rap videos. The dance itself is defined by Urban Dictionary as ‘An eccentric upper body dance move that involves the shaking of the upper torso and shoulders.’
On January 30th, 2013, a video was uploaded to Youtube by Gam3xpert featuring DizastaMusic’s Filthy Frank dancing to Baauer’s song, using multiple urban dance styles. According to the video’s description, it was origanally made as part of a school project. On February 2nd, parodies of Gam3xpert’s video were uploaded by TheSunnyCoastSkate and PHL On NAN, the latter of which would go viral on February 5th, amassing 300,000 views in 24 hours and prompting further parodies to be uploaded by other users shortly after.