JOIN USWant to impress children? Go learn the floss dance
Remember the ‘Gangnam style’ dance step that everyone got hooked on to? The catchy hands and legs movement was a pure delight to all dance enthusiasts.
The current favourite that is ruling the internet is ‘floss’ dance -- a dance move that involves fast swinging movements of arms and hips with clenched fists as though one is using an invisible dental floss.
Many in the city feel that this dance step is actually harder than it appears and definitely needs practice to make it look smooth.
Preethi Rajagopalan, creative movement practitioner says, “Floss is becoming extremely popular with teenagers. I see my son doing this all the time. It’s funny to see but if we go in detail, floss can have many benefits. Body coordination is one of the main things as the dance changes its rhythm from slow to fast. It can also help built concentration to actually try to swing the hands and hips on the opposite direction at the same time. This is like a brain gym that activates the brain and helps release stress. My suggestion would be that schools can use it in between two periods.”
Moumita Mondal of Left Foot Right Danceworks, says, “It is fun to see and if done properly, looks like one is flossing their entire body. It can be tricky in the beginning as one needs to take care of a lot of hand-body alignment.”
When asked if it will become popular with dancers, she says, “If the dance community wants to experiment this move with different dance vocabulary, it might grow. There are also possibilities that if dancers in dance reality shows incorporate this in their choreography it has a vast scope of being popular.”
Floss dance can be seen in one of the new commercials of Swiggy, where the mother is seen practicing the move while her daughter asks for lunch. It was also featured in the song ‘Kamariya’ from the film ‘Mitron’. The popularity of the dance move is celebrated in GIFs and the video game ‘Fortnite’.
Neha Cadabam, consultant psychologist, Cadabams Hospitals, says, “Any kind of dance is therapeutic and since it is movement, it helps one let loose and open up. It is a popular dance move and when one does it with friends, there is a sense of familiarity and that leads to comfort and belongingness.”
The boy who started it all
Floss dance became popular in May 2017 when Russell Horning aka ‘the backpack kid’ performed the same on ‘Saturday Night Live’ on Katy Perry song ‘Swish Swish’. With his fluidic moves, he became an overnight sensation.