Latest News

There is a Harlem Shake puppy edition, a grandma edition and a stripper edition, inspired by a song from the producer Baauer that is currently in its second week atop the Billboard Hot 100 — thanks largely to this deluge of videos.

The thing is, this worldwide dance contagion is not the Harlem Shake.

The real Harlem Shake, a much more raw, technical, fluid, frenetic dance, was born in New York City more than 30 years ago. During halftime at streetball games held in Rucker Park, a skinny man known in the neighborhood as Al. B. would entertain the crowd with his own brand of moves, a dance that around Harlem became known as "The Al. B."

"He would dance, and twist his shoulders," said his mother, Sandra Boyce, who is 69 and lives in Harlem. Al. B., whose real name was Albert Boyce, died in 2006 at 43. He spent much of his life dancing, his mother said, "to every rhythm, and every beat, and every song," and he created his own popular style at the park. "The Al. B. from there," she said, "became the Harlem Shake."

Many give credit to one four-man dance crew, Crazy Boyz, for taking Al. B.'s moves to the next level, popularizing them enough for the mainstream. While some in Harlem today have taken offense at the rebranding and posted videos of their own in response to the YouTube onslaught, members of the crew see another shot at stardom, the kind that burns brighter and longer than a 30-second parody.

"I'm not a hater," said Maurice Strayhorne, who is known as Motion and was part of Crazy Boyz. "But it's bitter in the sense of, it's like they're disrespecting the whole style of dancing."

He and his friends honed the dance in the late '90s at the Skate Key roller rink in the Bronx, where they hung out and flirted with girls, and at Rucker Park, where they watched Al. B. during those basketball games. "We looked up to a lot of his style, and the way he moved," said another crew member, Jesse Rutland, known as Smiley.

The Crazy Boyz said they combined their "shake" — spastic arm and chest movements — with Al. B.'s style to produce the Harlem Shake. The crew eventually took the dance to the hip-hop world in music videos for artists like Eve and Diddy, only to watch its popularity fade. "It's also sweet," Mr. Strayhorne, 30, said of the buzz around the imitation version on the Internet, "because the name is bringing the Harlem Shake back up."

"They made us relevant again," said a third member of Crazy Boyz, Joseph Collins, 32, who goes by No Bones.

The crew is rounded out by Kirkland Young, or Dirty Kirt. Two of the members grew up in Harlem. But none remembers how the dance got its name. "I called it the Funky Dance," Mr. Strayhorne said. Still, there is obvious pride in the dance in a neighborhood known the world over for its culture and style.

In a YouTube video titled "Harlem Reacts to 'Harlem Shake' Videos," some residents laugh at the controversy. But others express anger, especially at videos in which people don costumes and simply parade around. That interview footage so far has more than seven million views.

Elaine Caesar, who grew up in Harlem and now lives in the Bronx, shares the heated sentiments of some in the video.

"We take our dance seriously," said Ms. Caesar, 49, who works in Manhattan as a secretary. "Harlemites put their own little twist on it. So their dancing is an art. For people to make a mockery of it, what are you saying to us? Don't offend us with that nonsense you're calling the Harlem Shake."

But Michael Minott, a former D.J. based in New York, sees the Harlem Shake parodies, like the recent waves of Gangnam Style and "Call Me Maybe" videos, as harmless. "It gives people their 30 seconds of fame," Mr. Minott said. "The question is, is it the Harlem Shake? It's not the Harlem Shake. The Harlem Shake is a dance that has been around for a long time and will always be around."

If anything, he said, the controversy provides "an opportunity for dancers to bring the original dance back."

For the Crazy Boyz, who also work in construction, the constant stream of Harlem Shake videos and the related media coverage have stoked interest in them and the original dance. They said their style was simply a way to express freedom, which in that way makes the two dances one and the same.

"It's just how you're feeling at the moment," Mr. Rutland said. "Whatever move you do, you just do it, but you make sure you stay consistent with the beat."

When the Breakfast Club, a radio show on Power 105.1 FM, wanted a video for its Web site that would be a history lesson on the real Harlem Shake, it called Mr. Rutland. He mobilized seven teenagers from the after-school dance program where Crazy Boyz members teach. Some of the students are in dance crews of their own.

The result is a video that begins with a parody, with one dancer in a viking hat doing the new Harlem Shake. A caption reads, "This Ain't Harlem." Then for about four minutes, the dancers — arms and legs moving sometimes in a blur of attitude and style — do the original dance. "This," the caption declares, "is Harlem." The Breakfast Club posted the video on its Web site on Monday, and it is now on YouTube, with about 320,000 views, and counting.

Since then, Crazy Boyz members say, their phones have been ringing. There have been promises of television appearances for them to showcase the real Harlem Shake. The crew eventually hopes to display the other parts of their "Go Crazy" style, with signature dances like the Old Lady and the Wiggle, and to maybe one day have their own reality show centered on the dance crews in New York that create moves of expression and identity.

"We look at it as a movement," said Mr. Rutland, 32, who grew up in Harlem and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and 2-year-old son. "What we would love to see is our style being honored. We want Go Crazy to go big."

Mr. Strayhorne put the renewed attention in more simplistic terms. "A lot of people that didn't help me like a month ago with nothing are coming to me, like, 'You still dancing?' " he said. "That's how funny life is."