Putting a Métis twist on a social media trend

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This article was published 13/04/2020 (2060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since all of their upcoming dances and rehearsals were cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, members of the D-Town Steppers in Dauphin made the best of a bad situation by putting together a viral video.

On April 3, local dance mom Melanie Sanderson put out the call to fellow members of the Métis jigging community to see if they wanted to take part in their own version of the “makeup brush” or “don’t rush” challenge, a trend that is picking up steam on the social media platform TikTok.

The basic premise of the challenge is designed for the age of social distancing, where several people use a makeup brush to cover up the camera before revealing a glamorous new look and outfit. Using the power of video editing, the brush is then passed to another person in a new location, who repeats the same process.

But instead of echoing the usual pop or hip-hop aesthetic, Sanderson and her fellow dance enthusiasts decided to give their video a distinctly Métis spin with some fiddle music and full jigging attire.

“I don’t have TikTok … so I just told then to send me videos and I downloaded an app to merge the videos together,” Sanderson told the Sun on Saturday. “I was editing the videos just right off my phone and added some music.”

Sanderson managed to recruit 20 people to take part in this video, including dancers from nearby Ebb and Flow First Nation, Sandy Bay First Nation and Opaskwayak Cree Nation. She even got some participation from the Ivan Flett Memorial Dancers, who are currently self-isolating in Winnipeg.

“A lot of the dancers were saying how much they missed it,” Sanderson said over the phone. “From January right up until the end of February and the beginning of March we were going (to competitions) non-stop. Every single weekend we were gone, and then everything was getting cancelled and postponed. It was at a standstill.”

On April 4, Sanderson eventually released the full video on her personal Facebook page. It quickly gained traction with members of Manitoba’s jigging community and beyond, having generated more than 8,000 views and 550 shares as of Sunday afternoon.

“I didn’t think that it would take off like that,” she said this past weekend. “Everyone just loves it.”

Outside of the metrics, Sanderson was glad that this project helped her daughter Gracyn and son Gifford get their minds off the global pandemic for at least a couple days.

She said the social distancing guidelines put in place by the provincial government are hitting the kids especially hard, since they can’t intimately interact with friends or even some family members.

“My mum came by today and my daughter ran out to go hug and kiss her and she had to stop her,” Sanderson said on Saturday. “My mum felt bad about doing that, just remembering to keep her distance. So it takes a little bit to get used to still.”

Luckily, to keep spirits up, Sanderson is still posting new dancing videos on her Facebook page, choosing to run this year’s Gifford Sanderson Memorial Jigging Competition online.

Competitors who still want a shot at winning this year’s prizes have until Friday to submit their videos.

In the meantime, Sanderson implores her fellow dance enthusiasts to respect the government’s social distancing guidelines and do their part to help flatten the province’s rate of infection by staying home.

“It seems hard right now, but it’ll get better,” she said. “I believe the dance community will get back to where they were a few months ago and we’ll meet again.”

To view the D-Town Steppers’ makeup brush challenge video in full, visit Sanderson’s Facebook page.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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