A group of Russian women have been jailed for performing the Hip-Hop “twerking” dance move this week, imprisoned by authorities after they were found guilty of “hooliganism.”
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Said to have originated in West Africa, the dance move is a long running part of African-American Hip-Hop culture and was recently popularised by ‘Wrecking Ball‘ singer Miley Cyrus who performs the move in her visual for the single ‘We Can’t Stop.’
Now, it’s placed a group of women in Russia in hot water.
Russia celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Allies’ victory in the World War II next month, an emotionally charged holiday the Kremlin has been using for propaganda purposes.
The sentencing in the Novorossiysk district court of a 19-year-old woman to 15 days in jail and two women in their 20s to 10 days comes after prosecutors launched a probe into a video showing a group of women twerking next to the memorial on the Black Sea. Twerking is a sexually provocative dance involving thrusting of the hips.
Prosecutors said in a statement Saturday that five women were found guilty of “hooliganism” and two of them were spared jail because of poor health. Hooliganism is the charge that sent two members of punk band Pussy Riot to prison for two years for an impromptu protest at Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012.
Prosecutors in Novorossiysk also said they were pressing charges against the parents of one underage girl who was twerking with the others girls for “the failure to encourage the physical, intellectual, physiological, spiritual and moral development of a child.