Queen’s University Students Conquer the “Harlem Shake” Craze

Published on: 2013/02/13 - in Entertainment Featured

The Queen’s Centre at Queen’s University was packed tight this evening when student came together to perform the latest craze sweeping Universities: The Harlem Shake.

According to ‘Know Your Meme“, the Harlem Shake is a popular style of hip hop dance and the title of a 2012 heavy bass instrumental track produced by Baauer, the stage name of American producer Harry Rodrigues.

This new craze appears to have started on January 30th, 2013, when video blogger “Filthy_Frank” uploaded an episode of his vlog that begins with four people dressed in latex suits dancing to Baauer’s “Harlem Shake.” Within days, the song spawned a series of dance videos that begin with a masked individual doing the Harlem Shake alone in a group before suddenly cutting to a wild dance party featuring the entire group.

Many universities have jumped on the meme by posting their own videos online, and a number of student groups at Queen’s had already uploaded videos before this evening’s massive collaboration, including “Queen’s Commerce Bosses do the Harlem Shake“, “Queen’s TV Breaking News: New Trend on Campus“, “Harlem Shake – Queen’s West Campus“, “Queen’s University Wally 8 Harlem Shake“, “Harlem Shake (Queen’s Sci ’16 Version)“, “Harlem Shake- Commie Boys“, “Harlem Shake (Queen’s Computing)“, and “Harlem Shake at 15 Aberdeen“.

On Monday, February 11, a Facebook page was created to announce tonight’s effort with over 1600 people signing up to attend. A Queen’s TV video captured the event and it immediately went viral among students on Twitter and Facebook.

The Queen’s Harlem Shake begins with a lone figure – wearing a tricolour painted Storm Trooper helmet (pictured above) – dancing on a table in the Queen’s Centre, with a few people nearby seeming to take no notice of him. Then it breaks to hundreds of costumed students dancing chaotically in the packed Queen’s Centre food court. As it finishes, the group ends the video with the traditional Queen’s “Oil Thigh” song and dance.

The event – organized by Tymek Kubick, Kyler Gazzola, Anthony Marangon, Ray Kennedy & Marcus LeungYou – was filmed by QTV’s Justin Mathews and Sebastian Diaz and uploaded to Youtube the same night.


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Photo: Queen’s Harlem Shake Facebook page, posted by Tymek Kubicki with Anthony Marangon