Get ur Drake on: Hotline Bling's dance moves examined

On first viewing, Drake’s dad-like moves in the Hotline Bling video might seem a little laughable. But after a few plays it’s hard not to develop an admiration for his relaxed grooving. While doing precious little, the Canadian rapper manages to hint at a whole host of dance styles and icons, possibly without even knowing it. Here are some of the highlights ...

1. Drake does the light entertainer

The video for Hotline Bling features dance in pastel shades and as a result it’s actually way more subversive than a video full of krumping. Drake casually marks time, except he’s not quite in time, because Drake shuns the concept of dancing to anyone’s beat, not even his own. With those slight knee bends and raised elbows, there are echoes of Saturday-night playfulness, like Morecambe and Wise, if you gave their rhythm track some Valium. Pure light entertainment.

2. Drake does Bollywood

The side-to-side head waggle, the twisting hand gestures ... Drake is proving here that he has mastered many moves, in particular, the sundari, the head-bobbing move that comes from the south Indian classical dance form bharata natyam.

3. Drake does ballet

Revived here is one of the great moments in 20th-century dance. Drake’s ladies are rising up the staircase to heaven, no doubt in homage to the great 1928 ballet Apollo by Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine, in which the sun god’s muses, Terpsichore (the muse of dance), Polyhymnia (mime) and Calliope (poetry), ascend a similar staircase at the end of the dance.

4. Drake does salsa

A little hint of salsa. But not red-hot Cuban salsa. With Drake’s delicate, prissy flicks of the wrist, this is salsa danced by the uptight, upstate twinset brigade of Dirty Dancing’s ballroom classes, not the staff partying upstairs.

5. Drake does everything

Drake’s got a lot more moves to show you, and not much time to fit them in, so he ends the video with a montage, including The Stalker [at 4.20], The Bedtime Story [at 4.32] and The Bad Robot [4.49].
So does this eclectic grouping of dance techniques work? The answer is yes: in dance (as in life) what matters most is approaching each task with conviction, to dance like nobody is watching, even if you’ve got an audience of millions.