Three White Girls Successfully Pulling Off Hip-Hop Dance Moves

Prompted by Ayesha Siddiqi’s great “Can The White Girl Twerk” piece at the New Inquiry as well as yesterday’s season finale of So You Think You Can Dance [SPOILER ALERT AFTER THE JUMP], here is an appreciation post for a few white girl dancers who manage to successfully (in my eyes) negotiate a space in the middle of this complicated social convergence, in which, as Siddiqi puts it, “the thrill of appropriation lies in accessing the perceived authenticity of black sexuality, the success of appropriation lies in abandoning its natural form.”

First, from SYTYCD, Amy (who is very “white” and has no hip-hop background) and Fik-Shun, doing a routine choreographed by Tabitha (herself a white girl) and Napoleon.

Amy and Fik-Shun are this year’s winners. Now here’s Jeanine, the winner of the fifth season of SYTYCD, dancing a hip-hop routine by the same choreographers, with her partner Ade.

And here’s Alyson Stoner, the little white girl who was in all the Missy Elliot videos, who goes super hard on the actual Harlem Shake at around :29.