Dance for George Favorite 

When dancer Sheen Jamaal saw a video of protestors doing the Cupid Shuffle in New Jersey, inspiration struck to do something similar in New York. He immediately called his friend and collaborator Allison “Buttons” Bedell, and the seed for the Dance For George protest was planted. The event, on Sunday, June 7, drew around 400 people, who marched peacefully through NYC’s Harlem neighborhood, danced to the Electric Slide as a group, and closed with nine minutes of kneeling in silence together, in tribute to George Floyd.

While the tone for the day was serious, the goal was to celebrate Black culture and the contributions of Black artists to the dance and entertainment industries. The mix of songs Jamaal put together included “Electric Boogie” (the song associated with the Electric Slide) and other classic songs by Black artists. He and Bedell point out that many people, when they dance to the Electric Slide at a party, don’t even realize they’re dancing to a song by a Black woman. “For me the event stands for strength more than anything,” Jamaal says. “Finding a meaningful way to use art to effect social change—the way artists Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham did before us—it just felt right.”

Bedell cites the meaningfulness of watching a huge crowd of all ages and backgrounds moving together. “We get so wrapped up in choreography and learning and being perfect and all these things in the dance world, and I think sometimes you’ve got to remember that our craft is so expansive—it touches other things and it can bring everyone together,” she says. Jamaal agrees. “Getting messages from people saying this protest made them feel like now they can use their voice, or it gave them the strength to power through personal situations—for me, that feeling outweighs everything,” he says, “because it just shows that we’re much stronger together than divided.”