ABSTRACT
According to Google, in 2015 the most popular YouTube video in the Russian Federation was a clip entitled ‘Winnie the Pooh and the Bees’ (Allok and Anfilova 2015). 1 It received over 28 million views; however, it did not feature the characters from the famous children’s book. Instead the video features a group of teenage girls, dressed in black-and-orange striped leotards, performing a sexually charged twerk dance at the seasonal show of the local dance school ‘Kredo’ in Orenburg. The video was uploaded on 12 April 2015 by an anonymous user and the footage was taken by a member of the audience on a digital camera or personal mobile phone. In less than two weeks, this video was followed by another viral video featuring a twerk by Russian dancers who chose the World War II memorial Malaia Zemlia in the city of Novorossiisk as the backdrop for their performance. Both videos caused a heated public discussion about female behaviour and adolescent education; at the same time they placed the dance style, which is extremely popular among Russian youth, at the centre of this public discussion. Simultaneously, the videos became breaking news in international media, which focused on the penalties imposed on the dance schools and dancers involved. The school in Orenburg was temporarily closed, twerk classes removed from the schedule and a criminal investigation opened with charges of indecent exposure of underage children. Charges of hooliganism were brought against the young women from Novorossiisk and two of them were jailed for 10–15 days.
