Celebrities
Sinead Butler
Feb 21, 2022
CBS/The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Dua Lipa has been delighting fans at her concerts by playfully recreating her iconic meme dance, proving the pop star can laugh at herself.
As Lipa recently kicked off her highly anticipated Future Nostalgia tour that was meant to begin back in 2020 but due to Covid the date had to be postponed, it seems she added some extra nostalgia in reimaging the iconic dance.
Back in 2018, a clip of the pop star's dance moves as she bopped to her smash single with Calvin Harris One Kiss were ridiculed online and turned into GIFs (see below) but now she's spinning the joke on its head by fully embracing the meme.
Sporting a black and white Mugler couture bodysuit with over 120,000 crystals in the video, Lipa strutted onstage during the musical break of her hit song Don't Start Now before spinning around to give the fans what they wanted.
So like the lyrics of her song, she quite literally did a full 180.
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The crowd can be heard cheering extra loud when they quickly realise Lipa is recreating her classic dance meme, as Lipa smiles at their enthusiastic reaction.
Much like the original meme, the new clip of the self-referencing dance went viral on social media and has over 4.3m views.
SHE DID IT. this is what started the future nostalgia erapic.twitter.com/Cg3UYryMWA— Stream Ava Max (@Stream Ava Max) 1644464843
People were impressed with Lipa's new version of her dance meme but were even more impressed at her getting through it without laughing.
i just know this girl is trying her hardest not to laughhttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— \ud83c\udf38\u02da\u2727\u208a\u204e dia \u204e\u207a\u02f3\u2727\u0f1a \ud83c\udf38 (@\ud83c\udf38\u02da\u2727\u208a\u204e dia \u204e\u207a\u02f3\u2727\u0f1a \ud83c\udf38) 1644554278
she wanted to laugh so baddfhdhjdhttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— \u200f\u064b (@\u200f\u064b) 1644540821
She\u2019s trying not to laugh hahahahaha @DUALIPA the meme dance https://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— kofiii \u2615\ufe0f (@kofiii \u2615\ufe0f) 1645253031
I love a self reference. She knows exactly what she\u2019s doing look at her little smile therehttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— j (@j) 1644500304
Many also expressed how they loved that Lipa was bold enough to give a nod to her infamous meme that she was previously mocked for.
dua lipa insane for recreating that one kiss dance move that got her dragged\nso iconic of her.— \ud83c\udf19 (@\ud83c\udf19) 1645438939
no she\u2018s so cool for thishttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— \u064bsuna (@\u064bsuna) 1644502832
kinda iconic when you think about ithttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— t.o. (@t.o.) 1644497748
And wow did she really do a full 180https://twitter.com/theiookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— b (@b) 1644526301
She yassified the future nostalgia era https://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/yrh3Ix8DNI— Varun (@Varun) 1644582299
I\u2019m actually dying at the fact that her doing that caused such an uproarious responsehttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— Romeo S \ud83c\udde9\ud83c\uddf4 (@Romeo S \ud83c\udde9\ud83c\uddf4) 1644470916
I like Dua a lot, She is actually listening, she took this moment in her stride; bettered herself as a dancer, now makes it a joke - she\u2019s actively working this album and era to its FULL potential (not just binning it off and moving on like most after 2 singles) so, I Stan.https://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— Precious (@Precious) 1644521278
While lucky fans who have tickets to one of her shows shared their excitement at seeing Lipa perform the move live.
Seeing this iconic Dua Lipa dance irl cured mepic.twitter.com/k0VidpoFKc— GeGe\u2728 (@GeGe\u2728) 1644906931
I can\u2019t wait to finally see this in personhttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— Burley MacLaine (@Burley MacLaine) 1644502620
I also saw @DUALIPA last night and she was EVERYTHING?! Like a performer she IS! She even did the little washing machine dance at the end. LMFAOOOpic.twitter.com/NqUuTPZqVg— \u064b (@\u064b) 1645287640
I CANT WAIT TO EXPERIENCE THIS LIVEhttps://twitter.com/theIookofdanger/status/1491619780712878082\u00a0\u2026— \ud835\udd3c\ud835\udd55\ud835\udd66\ud835\udd52\ud835\udd63\ud835\udd55\ud835\udd60 (@\ud835\udd3c\ud835\udd55\ud835\udd66\ud835\udd52\ud835\udd63\ud835\udd55\ud835\udd60) 1644512436
Although Lipa is able to joke about her dancing becoming meme material, she revealed in an interview with Attitude how the viral video affected her mental health at the time, she said:
"There were so many things, especially when you start out, like a video of me dancing and they’re like, ‘Ah well, she has no stage presence’ – but they’d never been to one of my shows, they’d never seen me perform. They would take one small snippet and run with it and it would become a whole thing.”
“For a short period of time, it messed with my mental health," Lipa explained. "You know, I’d go on stage and if somebody was filming me, in my head, I wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, they’re filming me because they want to keep it.’ I was like, ‘They’re going to film it so they can laugh at me or something.”
Despite the comments, Lipa noted how the negative experience made her stronger: “Yeah, it was a tough time, but I’m also so grateful for the experience because I became so much stronger. I became so much more confident after that.”
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