In recent weeks, two groups of Harlem Shakers like this one were broken up by cops in Times Square. The global dance craze has landed lots of dancers in hot water. (Brian Zak)
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More than 200 young men in prep uniforms sit quietly in an auditorium as a chino-clad student wearing a red wig with pigtails grooves to a beat. Suddenly they’re all on their feet, jumping up and down, shirts torn off, bodies flying.
One person is picked up and slammed to the ground, while the dancers keep on moving.
This scene is from a video performed by New Jersey’s Seton Hall Prep high school seniors last month. It has more than 60,000 hits on YouTube. And the kid on the ground? He ended up with a head injury — a fact that video makers boast about in their posting: “KID GETS KNOCKED OUT!!! Over 200 members of the SHP senior class of 2013 go hard with their version of the Harlem Shake. One kid gets knocked out and gets a severe concussion at 0:17.”
Frank Maldonado, the Seton Hall Prep senior who planned the video shoot, says he had permission to make it, and in spite of the fall, there was no fallout.
“The headmaster trusted me to organize the event and make sure nothing profane would go on,” Maldonado told The Post in an e-mail. “The school took it well, and it’s been nothing but positive. And yes the kid is OK! He was left mildly concussed.”
But not everyone is laughing off the Shake — and its consequences.
The craze seemed harmless at first. The catchy track produced by Brooklyn DJ and music producer Baauer has topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks straight and inspired half a million people to post their own viral dance videos on YouTube.
The recordings all start with a single person dancing like crazy surrounded by others who appear oblivious. After the beat drops a few seconds in, the entire group — usually wearing costumes or masks — joins in, throwing their hands in the air, leaping up and down and generally creating pandemonium.
High school students, college kids and company employees from Egypt to the East Side of Manhattan have all gotten in on the act, grabbing their chance to have a bit of fun while being a part of history.
But now, just weeks after comedian Filthy Frank posted the first Harlem Shake video on Feb. 2, the fad is starting to look like the “Footloose” of the YouTube era.
In other words, where and when you get your Shake on can get you in a lot of trouble.
So far, about 100 students around the country have been suspended for making the dance videos at school, according to the National Coalition Against Censorship. Two Shake mobs were broken up in Times Square. A teacher from Oklahoma was reportedly suspended, and 15 gold miners in Australia were fired for posting their versions of the Shake. In Russia, five people were arrested for dancing on a WWII army tank at a memorial. And Tunisia has gone as far as banning its citizens from even performing it.
In Brownsville, Pa., 13 students were given two-day suspensions after filming a Shake video in their classroom. The Brownsville school board president pointed to the “graphic” content. And one girl does pull her pants down in the video to reveal short shorts.
But there is no excuse for punishing students who are simply expressing themselves, says Acacia O’Connor, a coordinator at the National Coalition Against Censorship.
“The dance may be in poor taste, some might call it raunchy, but it’s not, by legal definitions, even close to being obscene,” O’Connor says. “It’s no different than what the students would do at a school dance.”
O’Connor believes the schools’ crackdown is a violation of students’ civil liberties and says it’s just another example of teachers and administrators overreacting to kids using free speech online and in social media. She even says the Seton Hall Prep authorities, who didn’t discipline their students for the Shake video that injured a student, were in the right.
“Students were voluntarily participating in the video that was authorized,” she says. “If a student in a cheerleading pyramid fell, it would be an accident. It’s no different with a video.”
Hundreds of employees across the US have produced Shake videos to promote company team building and project their fun-loving work culture. But employment experts warn that this could also suddenly land workers in hot water.
“When it’s work-related and distributed publicly, you have to be prepared to be disciplined,” says LinkedIn career expert Nicole Williams. “It’s not highly productive and it’s making the company that they’re representing look bad.
“It’s not just an issue for an employer because you’re wasting time,” she continues. “The business could be actually getting financially hit because investors and clients are seeing it online. Of course there are going to be severe ramifications for that, so, yeah, more people are going to get fired.”
Some employees don’t even have control over when a Harlem Shake video happens in their workplace. On a Frontier Airlines flight last month, a group of Colorado College students leapt out of their seats and spontaneously danced midair before flight attendants knew what hit them. The video has more than 5 million views, and the Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating.
“The FAA is looking into the Frontier Airlines flight to determine whether any federal aviation regulations were violated, particularly the phase of flight when the dance occurred,” says an FAA spokesperson.
In New York schools, the controversy continues to rage. At the city’s elite Stuyvesant High School, students were reportedly disciplined for filming a video on the indoor escalators in their building in mid-February.
And at Forest Hills High School in Queens, senior Arnis Mehmetaj, 17, was arrested and suspended for a video that never even happened.
Mehmetaj was planning the video, but when he realized there were too many people hoping to attend his shoot, he called it off. The police still issued him a desk ticket for disorderly conduct. Mehmetaj’s father, Kapllan, told The Post that school administrators eventually called him and lifted his son’s five-day suspension.
But, in a move that would please civil-rights advocates, many other Gotham schools are taking a hands-off approach to the trend. At the Upper East Side’s Dalton School, a group of seniors made a video called “Harlem Shake (NYC Prep Edition),” in what looks like a study room, standing on tables and chairs, and no one batted an eyelid.
And at the Upper West Side’s Dwight School, two resourceful students used a Harlem Shake video as part of their student-council campaign. Alex Hagani says he worked with his theater group and director to make the video, which got a positive response.
Still, he wouldn’t have gone the mob route.
“I wouldn’t want to run a school-wide one because I think it could get really out of hand,” Hagani says. “You’d have to know how to control a really large group of people.”
In the meantime, school officials are likely hoping that, like “Gangnam Style” before it, the Shake will soon be played out.
kstorey@nypost.com
Additional reporting by Tim Donnelly