She’s done a full 180. Dua Lipa is “reclaiming” her viral TikTok dance and has fully embraced it on tour.
During her Thursday, March 3, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the “Don’t Start Now” singer, 26, reflected on the reaction that a clip from one of her 2017 performances caused when it blew up on social media.
“Some haters got online and said, ‘This is a lazy dance. It’s uninspired,'” host Jimmy Fallon said, while Lipa joked that many social media users said that she looked “like she’s trying to put her shoe on in a rush.” The dance move in question involved the singer standing in one place while bouncing and shaking her hips.
The Grammy winner continued: “There was a moment where it actually caused me a lot of grief, like I was being bullied online. It wasn’t very nice.”
Now, however, Lipa is no longer embarrassed by being turned into a meme. “The reason we’re talking about it is because I’ve brought it back, I’m doing it on my tour — I’m reclaiming it,” the “Levitating” musician explained, adding that she’s incorporated the move into the choreography for her Future Nostalgia tour. “I can look at it from a different perspective. I look back at it with such fondness because it helped me grow into the artist that I wanted to become, it made me work harder.”
Lipa has previously opened up about the impact that the video’s negative reaction has had on her as an artist. “It’s one thing when people are mean about you, but you know that you did your best,” she told Vanity Fair in June 2021. “But it’s another thing when people are mean about you, and you know that you actually haven’t had the opportunity to be the best because you’ve spread yourself so thinly in trying to do everything at once.”
The “IDGAF” singer added that the backlash made her even more determined to prove herself with the release of her sophomore album, Future Nostalgia. “You want to show that you’re here to stay and you want to show that it’s not just about one album or one big song or whatever it is,” Lipa said. “I just wanted to make sure that this time around, I was very much in control of the fact that I’m going to do the music, then I’m going to rehearse.”
She continued: “And then when I come in and I do the performances, they’re all going to be amazing. I’m going to prove to people that I can do this and that I’m here to stay.”
