Eight dance students from a Brampton-area hip-hop dance studio performed in a live taping of the Ellen DeGeneres Show in Burbank, Calif., to be aired Friday afternoon.
After Missy Elliott released her new song “WTF” (Where They From), featuring Pharrell Williams, on Nov. 12, Jade Jager Clark of Jade’s Hip Hop Academy posted a dance by her students set to the song four days later.
Clark said in a news release she was “incredibly humbled and honoured” when Elliott, who Clark calls the “Queen of Hip-Hop” tweeted a link to her dance, but when producers from the Ellen DeGeneres Show came calling, asking if dancers from her studio could come to California to perform on her show, Clark said it was a “dream.”
The show flew dancers aged 8-17 from Clark’s academy to perform their dance set to Elliot’s new song on Friday morning, and Ellen’s resident DJ, tWitch joined in and danced with them.
“The whole experience still feels quite surreal,” Clark said.
The dance on Ellen’s show was meant to launch a new smartphone app called Chosen, that allows viewers of the show to upload videos of themselves dancing and compete for a chance to win a trip to Los Angeles next year.
Clark says her studio aims to teach “authentic” hip-hop dance as a “respectable art form,” as opposed to what Clark called “twerking and hair flipping” popularized in some music videos.
