WHO: Michael and Ali Hoffman, a Dallas father and daughter with a penchant for dance.

WHAT: A new viral dance video, five years after their last one.

WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Look, we’re all bored. We’re all stuck indoors. We are all stressed and anxious and worried for our friends and families, we’re all terrified about what it means for our futures that there is no clear end in sight for the current pandemic and that the curve of new cases across the United States keeps trending upward rather than flattening, which we’ve repeatedly heard is the way to save lives and keep our health-care system from being overwhelmed.

But what are you going to do with those feelings? Are you going to stuff them into the growing pit inside your stomach, churning through them endlessly until they gnaw an ulcer into your innards, sleeping just a few restless hours every night despite the fact that even your most shrieking night terrors are only roughly as terrifying as the actual reality outside your door?

Or are you gonna dance?

In 2015 the Hoffman family—stuck inside during a five-day ice storm in the Dallas–Fort Worth area—filmed a video of daughter Ali and father Michael lip-synching and performing a choreographed dance routine to “Uptown Funk” featuring Bruno Mars. The video became a Facebook and YouTube hit, owing mostly to the full buy-in from the pair (as well as a more grudging cameo from Ali’s mom). Now, in 2020, with the family in self-quarantine like the rest of us, they’ve released a new routine, this one set to Jess Glynne’s “Hold My Hand.”

Like the Ice Day Challenge video, the family’s Quarantine Challenge is charmingly earnest, with the family lip-synching and dancing with their whole hearts. At press time, it’s been shared on Facebook more than 150,000 times, and viewed nearly four million times. These are the strangest days many of us have ever lived through, and while we all struggle to find ways to center ourselves amid the crisis, let’s take a moment to gratefully acknowledge the Hoffman family for their dedication to dancing through this thing.

 

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