Culture

What Is The Viral ‘Renegade Dance’, And Who Deserves The Credit For Creating It?

It took five months for Jalaiah Harmon to be credited for starting the viral Renegade dance -- but does she have any legal ownership over her dance moves?

by Michelle Rennex  19 February 2020
renegade dance copyright

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In September, 14-year-old Jalaiah Harmon posted a video on Instagram dancing to K-Camp’s smash hit, ‘Lottery’.

Four months later, Kourtney Kardashian and Lizzo performed a version of Jalaiah’s dance in what is now known as the Renegade challenge. The Renegade challenge is a fast-moving 15-second dance to the song ‘Lottery’, which features popular moves like the woah and dab. People started performing the challenge after popular TikTok creators like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae featured the dance on their pages.

Renegade quickly took off on the video sharing platform because of it’s straight-forward dance moves. The challenge became so popular on TikTok that K-Camp, the artist behind the viral song even renamed ‘Lottery’ to ‘Lottery (Renegade) after searches began to climb thanks to the dance challenge. But music finding great success on TikTok is not rare, with ‘Say So’ by Doja Cat and ‘Glitter’ by Benee also getting a similar treatment in the last few months.

Credit For The Real Creator Of Renegade

According to Rebecca Jennings from Vox, the first instance of a version of Jalaiah’s dance making its way to TikTok was by a dancer by the name of @global.jones. This shift from Instagram to TikTok completely removed any mention of the originators of the dance.

Once Charli D’Amelio performed Renegade, people started believing that she started the craze. This is because Charli is one of the platform’s most popular creators with over 27 million followers. Charli primarily posts dance videos to her TikTok account, so it was natural for people to assume that she had created the dance that no one had really seen prior. While Jalaiah was glad her dance was seen across the globe, she told The New York Times she just wanted credit. “I was happy when I saw my dance all over,” Jalaiah shared. “But I wanted credit for it.”

After the New York Times published their story on Jalaiah Harmon, something amazing happened. She started getting the credit that she had been seeking for five months. First, K-Camp filmed an Instagram video with Jalaiah and her friend Skylar to thank them for making ‘Lottery’ “the BIGGEST song in the world.”

Following this, Charli D’Amelio posted a video with Jalaiah to introduce TikTok to the true originator of the celebrated dance. “Guys i would like to introduce you to @_.xoxlaii. I am so happy that she was able to teach me the original choreography that she made, she is the best!,” Charli captioned her TikTok which has now garnered over 4.9 million likes in just a few days.

Then, most recently, Jalaiah was invited to perform her Renegade dance at the NBA All-Star Game in Chicago. Joined by the Chicago Bulls cheerleaders and mascot, the crowd cheered Jalaiah on as she finally got her much-deserved recognition. Since Jalaiah’s weekend-long Renegade whirlwind, her Instagram following has grown to 285,000 followers and in two days she’s managed to amass a million followers on TikTok.

The Problems With Viral Phenomena And Copyright

But while Jalaiah was eventually given recognition for her work, the way the internet operates makes it increasingly harder for these stories to end in success. The Renegade dance is only one example of the problems with content ownership and copyright when it comes to internet phenomena.

In 2014 , Kayla Newman failed to get any compensation for creating the phrase “on FLEEK”, which brands readily used in campaigns. A year after “on fleek” became part of everyday language, Taco Bell used the term to promote their hashbrowns. The same year, Hefty used the phrase to describe an ice luge in an attempt to sell disposable cups. In both instances, Kayla received nothing for the brands using the phrase that didn’t exist before her video.

While talking to The New York Times, Jalaiah described the biggest issue with the lack of credit and compensation. “I think I could have gotten money for it, promos for it, I could have gotten famous off it, get noticed,” Jalaiah said. “I don’t think any of that stuff has happened for me because no one knows I made the dance.”

Copyright law in America states that dance steps cannot be copyrighted, but choreography can be if it is recorded or written down. However, just because this choreography can fall under copyright, nothing is stopping someone from altering and adapting your dance — which is exactly what happened on TikTok as the dance began to take off. Plus, in the world of social media, policing who uses your content is a very difficult task.

But it’s not like giving credit to an artist isn’t possible. Famously, Drake invited social media personality Shiggy to be in his ‘In My Feelings’ music video after the In My Feelings dance challenge took off. Shiggy’s challenge went viral and helped Drake’s song skyrocket to number one on the charts. Then there’s the Backpack Kid who sued Epic Games, the creators of Fornite, for their unapproved use of the Floss — the dance move that made him famous.

As each case of viral sensation has yielded different results, it’s hard to say what’s in the future for creators and their creations. But that isn’t going to stop the next dance challenge from cropping up, with Jalaiah’s success story likely only going to inspire more people to follow in her footsteps.