Dhe German ambassador to India danced with his staff in the middle of the capital, New Delhi, to the recently chosen Oscar-winning song. With the professionally produced flash mob video, which Ambassador Philipp Ackermann shared on Twitter at the weekend, they said they wanted to celebrate the song’s Oscar win.
“Germans can’t dance?” wrote the diplomat. And: “Okay, far from perfect. But funny!” The video was clicked, commented on and retweeted a lot. It made it into many local media outlets.
The German embassy got the idea for the video from the South Korean embassy, which released a dance video of the same song “Naatu Naatu” just over a month ago, earning praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He tweeted, “Lively and lovely group effort.”
In his tweet, the German ambassador called on other embassies to imitate. His British colleague Alex Ellis wrote below: “Hmmm. Interesting…” Before that, many people in India posted their dances of the song on social media.
In the video, the ambassador wore Indian clothing and most Indian and German embassy employees wore either kurtas or lederhosen and dirndls. 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 was filmed in front of the baroque Palace of St. Mary in Kiev, the ceremonial residence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – before the war.