Weekly Dance Break: Royal Family (#WODLA)

I’m really, really excited about this one, you guys. I could watch this an untold number of times (and have, to be honest). There’s something so invigorating, eye-popping, scream-worthy, so YES! about this crew’s performance, especially in WOD’s front-row presentation. It’s up close, in your face greatness. The energy is infectious.

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Weekly Dance Break: BBHMM (Rihanna)

To me, there was really one choice for weekly dance break this time around.

A warning, I suppose, for violence and nudity—though not more violence, I think, than your average CSI episode. This is also allegorical. It’s more than just a bloodbath. It’s a meditation on how intensely personal financial violence is (look for the knife Ri Ri labeled “ruined credit”), since money is always more than money—it’s power, independence, survival. It also contains a lot of food for thought re: the status of the white trophy wife. Finally, Black Girl Dangerous said it better than I could, with regard to the “torture porn” aspect of a black woman inflicting pain on a white woman.

Weekly Dance Break: American Oxygen (Rihanna)

This week’s dance break is a little bit different: less about relaxation and more about content. Rihanna’s “American Oxygen” can probably be read “straightforwardly” as a song praising the American Dream, but the imagery of its music video, spliced with footage of the KKK, Martin Luther King, and race riots, begs a more complicated question.