Dab (dance)

Dab, or dabbing, is a gesture in which a person leans forward into the bent crook of a slanted, upward angled arm, while raising the opposite arm out straight in a parallel direction. It appears to be similar to someone sneezing or coughing into an elbow. Since 2015, dabbing has been used as a gesture of triumph or playfulness, becoming a youthful fad and Internet meme.

Before the term "dab" was coined, the move had been a feature of Japanese popular culture for decades. A popular example is the 1990s anime series Dragon Ball Z, where the character Gohan (as The Great Saiyaman) occasionally performs the dab. It is known as a "Sentai move" in Japan, from its popular use in the 1970s' Super Sentai and Kamen Rider tokusatsu superhero series (localised as Power Rangers and Masked Rider in the 1990s). During the show Detective Conan's (2000) opening theme "Koi wa Thrill, Shock, Suspense", the main character was shown dancing while occasionally dabbing; twenty years later, this opening was remade again in Opening 51, with the same character doing a few dabs when the theme music starts. Other anime series where the dab move appears include the early 2010s show Love Live!, among others. The English language audio dub of the Japanese anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS (2017) adds a joke referring to a Sentai move as "the dab".

The move has been seen in mainstream music videos and used in pop performers' dance routines, such as in singer Janet Jackson's music videos for "The Pleasure Principle" (1987), "Escapade" (1990), and "If" (1993). On her MDNA World Tour (2012), singer Madonna and her backup dancers incorporated a quick dab move into the opening dance routine to her song "Girl Gone Wild".

Some Quality Control artists had claimed the dab was invented by rapper Skippa Da Flippa, and that its origins were within the Atlanta hip-hop scene of the 2010s. However, the Migos—who subsequently released a single entitled "Look at My Dab" (2015)—claimed to have invented the move, but later stated that Skippa Da Flippa was the true creator (after criticism from another member of that label, OG Maco).

American rapper Bow Wow attempted to explain the origin of the dab, saying it derived from the cannabis dabbers community, which started in and around 2012, before the dance move was created, a statement which earned the artist opposition from other rappers who immediately took to Twitter to insult Bow Wow and disprove his claims. The rappers Peewee Longway, Jose Guapo and Rich the Kid also contributed to popularizing the dab dance.

An Indian dance includes a wingtip-hand version of dabbing; Bollywood dancers can be seen performing the move in the song "Tamma Tamma Loge".

As XXL magazine reported in August 2015, "What started as a regional down South adlib is quickly becoming a masterful maneuver in clubs and on street corners. It’s called dabbin’." Jason Derulo and Ella Honey taught James Corden how to dab during the November 4, 2015, edition of "Carpool Karaoke" on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

The dab gained popularity in American sports following an eight-second celebratory dab by Cam Newton, football quarterback for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League, during a game against the Tennessee Titans on November 15, 2015. According to a Sports Illustrated account of the incident, "[w]hen two Titans players confronted [Newton] about the celebration, he continued to dance in their faces, even as he backed away." Newton explained the incident by crediting a 16-year-old for instructing him to "Dab on them folks":