On the winter solstice, in a bright blue sweater, an orange turban, and brown snow boots, Gurdeep Pandher posted a video of himself online doing what he calls a “happy dance”: arms to the sky, knees high, and the broadest of smiles. This is what he does in the snow-covered forest behind his cabin near Whitehorse, Yukon.
Mr. Pandher has 42,000-plus Twitter followers, 75% of whom arrived only since the pandemic, who tune in to watch him dance bhangra, originally a farmer’s dance in Punjab. Mr. Pandher has been dancing it since he was a child, and he says there’s no surprise to him that it’s caught on. “If you’re dancing bhangra, and you are not happy, that is not bhangra, even if you are doing all the moves perfectly,” he says.