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| The dance move called 'The Dab' is officially dead!!! |
We all love the dab. It’s classy, looks dope, feels like a decent move, and most importantly, it’s easy to learn, and requires very negligible amount of energy to pull off.
In the quest for the perfect Nigerian dance, “the dab” has been the easiest so far to learn, rising in prominence among the young folks, who are naturally the first to pick up on any craze. The reasons for its meteoric rise and inclusion in our pop culture was simple: it came from the West, popularized from the creative hotbed of Atlanta, and seeping down to us as well, all other things do. It was also easy to learn, perhaps very easy.
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| dab dance |
Alanta needed you to scratch like a mad man, Azonto was for rocket scientists with all of that oscillating limbs, rhythmically complex hand movements and energy. Shoki needed the best of your waist to accomplish. And it also didn’t help that it was open to interpretation, with everybody personalizing the dance and making others feel like their ‘Shoki’ was the best. It was really morale-deflating stuff, and became a horror show later. Sekem, well. Sekem came from an untrusted source, and only Michael Jackson enthusiasts, can drag one foot across the floor, leaving the other lifeless, while appearing to enjoy it with one hand on your waist, and the other on your chest. Hell no!
But dabbing was easy. It was a simple dance in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm and the elbow in a gesture that has been noted to resemble sneezing. As a Sports Illustrated article about the phenomenon described the Dab, “The dance is pretty simple; one leans in to their elbow like they’re sneezing."
Everyone caught the dab. I, Joey Akan, the overweight, balloon-waist, chubby, sexy Nubian god of love, could also dab. Before dabbing, I never danced in public. But now I could. Children sampled it on the streets, the boys made it fit into any song in the club. In the offices, ‘Team Dabbing Sessions’ was launched to foster teamwork and make the dream work. According to bosses, it boosted productivity by whatever percentage they care to slap on that lie. In churches, people dabbed to the glory of God, and praised the lord with a wonderful dab. He was also exalted with a dab offering, and Pastors executed the most hilarious religious dabbing to edify their brethren. At homes, your parents embarrassed you with dabbing, and your annoying Uncles called you to come display like a clown for a few bucks.
And it is at the juncture, that we have decided that the Dab is dead.
So, then, as all trends grow and come to pass, the moment has come for the dance move to be laid to rest, taken to a spiritual church, buried in some ancestral cemetery, and left to fester in the backpages of time.
Dab was first killed in the US, its home country. In an interview with TMZ, Quavo of the rap group Migos—who are widely recognized as one of the originators of "the dab," having immortalized it in the hallowed hallways of their Instagram and tracks like "Look At My Dab (Bitch Dab)"—signaled the death of the dance move. Asked about comments made by the NFL star Cam Newton regarding the expiration of the dance move, Quavo states "RIP" to "the dab." He then goes on to say, "You got to give everybody a new trend, a new wave or something new to do so I feel him on that. Everybody was copying it and now it's time to switch lanes."
But Nigeria is yet to catch on to the news. Our musicians still promote a dead culture in their music videos, and we all are still reluctant to let it go. It’s fine, all good things come to an end. Let’s all pour libation, cry our hearts out, and look sad while we go back to our chairs and wait for a new dance move.
Unless you're the sort of person who is still comfortable wearing ‘Ama Kip Kip’ t-shirts or a ‘spinners’ belt in 2016, this means it is now socially unacceptable to engage in "the dab" in public. Fear not, though, as we can always count on the YBNL boys to come up with something real quick.
Thanks for listening. Go into the world and dab no more.
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