A Xmas "Horror"

This is the link to the video on X.

https://twitter.com/FLOTUS/status/1...23/12/19/white-house-tap-dance-woke-ingraham/

Right-wing pundits tremble in fear of … tap-dancing

Hide your children, hide your wives. A radical force is sweeping the nation, threatening to destroy everything that God-fearing Americans hold dear.
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That threat, according to Fox News? Tap-dancing, one of the most quintessentially American art forms there is.

Festooned with wide smiles, whimsical headpieces and a healthy helping of sequins, the dancers percuss their way around the White House. Familiar characters from the “Nutcracker” — such as a rodent king and the young heroine Clara — sprinkle kinetic joy through the East Wing’s Christmas trees. The video opens and closes with saucy flourishes from “Sugar Rum Cherry” (performed by co-choreographer Josette Wiggan).

The piece is wholesome and exuberant. As a longtime admirer of Dorrance Dance, I watched the two-minute clip over and over when it was released and gushed over it with my dance-nerd friends.

Not every viewer was enthralled, though. Over in the right-wing mediaverse, people practically lost their minds.

The G-rated performance, which happened to feature some dancers of color, was “woke nonsense” and part of the “Biden freak-o-rama,” declared Fox News host Laura Ingraham. She said it was designed to “offend” the public and appeal to “flag burners and the America haters.”

“Anything connected to the American tradition has to be reimagined and then remade through a far-left lens,” Ingraham said of the troupe’s take on the Russian Christmas classic, adding that “it is kind of a big middle finger to Christians in this country, I think, and frankly to all Americans, not just Christians.”

Newsmax host Eric Bolling called the routine “replete with tasteless perversions” and “beyond woke.” Former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller lambasted its “freakishness.” The Federalist called the video an “abomination” and an attempt by the Bidens to slip “radical Marxism into the country’s Christmas celebrations.”

Who knew anyone could get so triggered by jazz hands?

Anyone who thinks this “Nutcracker” rendition is “freakish” must have never seen the original. However weirded out these grinches were by a syncopated jaunt through the White House, trust me: Tchaikovsky’s classical ballet is way weirder. The original ballet plot involves possessed dolls, a tall man in drag who hides children under an enormous skirt, Russian Cossacks dressed like candy and a terrifying, seven-headed mouse. It’s like a tulle-filled acid trip.

More importantly, consider why these reactionaries were upset by this particular adaptation.

Some were pretty explicit that what set them off about the tap-dance troupe was that it has — gasp! — Black people in it. (“It’s diverse as hell. They had to do that. It had to be a DEI video,” said Newsmax host Rob Schmitt.) Most, however, objected to materials on the dance organization’s website devoted to fighting racism and lifting up Black artists.

“It is our job to tell the history of tap dance as a celebration of Black culture and also the never-ending struggle against systemic racism and white supremacy in this country — the origin story of appropriation in American culture,” writes the troupe’s founder, MacArthur “Genius” grantee Michelle Dorrance, who is White.


Maybe this sounds “radical” to Fox News hosts or others accustomed to thinking of dance as bland, apolitical amusement. But tap is a uniquely American art precisely because it is infused with the country’s racial history, including the ugly parts.

Historians typically trace the origins of tap dance to enslaved Africans and their descendants crossing paths with Irish Americans. Contemporary tap draws from the traditions of two distinct populations, forged through voluntary immigration and forced migration, who deployed rhythmic dance for both entertainment and protest.

Despite this, it was White artists who were most able to financially benefit from this art form as it mutated through the mediums of jigging, minstrelsy, vaudeville, Broadway and a segregated Hollywood. Tap exemplifies the beauty that can be wrought out of pain and injustice — and rewarded with further pain and injustice.

Even today, Dorrance acknowledges that more people might have heard of her than the Black tap pioneers on whose shoulders she stands (or, uh, time-steps), such as the legendary Dianne Walker. This awareness is partly why Dorrance is so deliberate in how she crafts her work, including in the choice to tour a tap-dance Nutcracker created “with the spirit of inclusion.”

“I believe in tap dance, an art form born of resistance and individual expression, as a powerful vehicle for both joy and social change,” Dorrance said via email.

Perhaps, then, the right-wing cultural anxiety surrounding this charming White House holiday video is not entirely baseless. Tap in general is deceptively subversive. And this particular holiday performance features Black dancers, interpreting a work co-created by a Black choreographer, using an artistic medium borne of the Black diaspora, performed in a seat of global power built by Black enslaved people.

Rarely has there been a more American Christmas story.

So here we are, another Xmas where the right-wing propaganda machine has to act like bah-humbug Scrooges.

I don't know about you, but I love tap dance. I've been thinking about actually taking some lessons. It is good exercise after all, but this isn't about the nuances of that uniquely American style of dance. It is about once again the right-wing media juicing up its base to attack the Bidens, in this case, the First Lady.

I love the video. I love what Jill Biden has done this, a far cry from Melania's Nightmare Before Christmas theme. It's truly festive in a very classy and wholesome way.

It is blatantly apparent that the right is composed of xenophobic and ignorant racists to bitch about this video. I guess it wouldn't be Christmas without their jaded hyperboles.

 

Gregory Hines and the Tap Masters 1989 (youtube.com)

 

Love it!

Thanks for posting that link.

 

First they came for our Christmas Starbucks cups, then they came for our pronouns, now they are tap dancing!!!!

The horror!

 

Kind of sounds like how the liberal media had a freak out about melania's Christmas tree display.


And you might want to lay off the posting of the allegations of xenophobia considering how very anti-semitic the left has been recently instructed to become.

 

Which was fugly. It looked like a cross between a car wash and the Texas chainsaw massacre. The white was worse. At least Jill hasn’t put up the “Be best” baubles

 

I'm taking a wild guess here, but have any libs looked into the background of the group that did this? I'm betting not one lib media outlet reported on that.

 

You mean this part?

Yes, that is soooo nefarious.

 

I watched it, nice tap dancing! I noticed all the blacks are dressed elegant and the one white guy has a PIG mask on on the other one has a giant strange flower costume, one normal dressed white person and everyone else black. Also the one white woman wasn't even in a nice dress, as in its above her. Lots of anti-white racism in that video but all the digs and virtue signaling aside that they were OBVIOUSLY trying to in this video at Jesus's expense, the actual dance routine and the scenery was very well done.

 

They're anti cop. They're essentially antifa and blm rolled into one.

 

Yep, whites are sooooo oppressed.

 

Unbelievable.

 

I thought the same thing. But then again, this is the admin who invited trannies into the WH.

 

Well, but they kept their clothes on this time, so they have that going for them ....

 

And how is that related to my OP? Or are you once again attempting to derail the thread?

 

The dance troop isn't part of your OP? Really? If I wanted to derail your thread I'd use a liberal approved method and drag Trump into this?

 

Imagine living that far across the world and still being upset about white house decorations...

 

So they aren't citizens?

 

“Be best” was a good message, but with her husband, it seemed more like it was a message from her to him than anyone else

 

I don't believe he remotely said anything similar.

But maybe I missed it and you can point out the part where he said they're not citizens?

 

How do you know it wasn’t a case of “whatever costume fits is the one you wear” but as someone pointed out - there has always been odd costumes in that ballet

 

Fugly is fugly no matter where you live

 

So why would he have a problem with American citizens being invited into the WH?

 

Horror.... no. Clownshow... absolutely. It signals to the world our weakness, insipidity and baseness. America has never been weaker in my lifetime. Paradoxically, it will never be as a strong as it right now. We are no longer the global hegemon. We have an entered into a multi-polar world. The trajectory is undeniable, the new global hegemon will be Asian and it will have nothing but brutal disdain for the old Empire's political correctness and pathological anti-whiteness. The leadership of Asian countries is orders of magnitude more competent than the Wests. They have earned their position in the world.... just as we have earned our catastrophic fall. It did not happen overnight, it took decades.

 

I don't know anything about it in fact This thread is the first I've heard of it.

I'm more annoyed by it being tap dance because that's a derivative art form