India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised a dance video by the German Embassy in India to the recently voted Oscar-winning song. “The colors and flavors of India!” Modi wrote on Twitter. “Germans can dance clearly and dance well.”
Ambassador Philipp Ackermann and his staff danced to the Indian song “Naatu Naatu” from the film “RRR” in the middle of the bustling old town of the capital New Delhi and shared a professionally produced flash mob video of it on Twitter over the weekend. The diplomat wrote: “Germans can’t dance?” And: “Ok, far from perfect. But funny!”
The video got a lot of views, comments, shares and made it into many local media outlets. The Germans got the idea from the South Korean embassy, which released a dance video of the same song just over a month ago, also earning praise from the prime minister, who is very active on social media. He tweeted at the time: “Lively and lovely group effort.” Previously, many people in India shared their dance performances to the song on social media.
In his tweet, the German ambassador called on other embassies to imitate. His British colleague Alex Ellis wrote: “Hmmm. Interesting….” Ackermann wore Indian clothes in the video and most Indian and German embassy employees either kurtas or lederhosen and dirndl. Everyone had practiced the approximately one-minute dance for two hours with a choreographer in the ambassador’s garden, said the spokesman for the embassy.
The original video for the Oscar-winning song “Naatu Naatu” was shot in front of the baroque Palace of the Virgin Mary in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, the ceremonial residence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the war.
