Princess Isis Lang wasn’t even going to post that video.
Filmed in the stands of the University of Southern California student section at a September 17 football game against Fresno State University, Lang, the captain and founder of the Cardinal Divas, worried that the video wasn’t right to post because the whole team wasn’t visible in the video, or that it may come off wrong.
“We were in the group [chat] like, no you need to post this,” Kyla-Drew Simmons, a member of the Cardinal Divas, said. “And then boom, she posted and then it's like at a million views and the rest is history.”
The now-viral 8-second clip of the Cardinal Divas of SC posted on September 18 served as the unofficial debut of the first all-Black USC majorette dance team. The group’s formation is a historic feat that was met with 3.2 million views on Twitter, praise from around the country, and even celebrity shout outs.
But amid all the congratulations, backlash also started to swell. What followed was a fiery Twitter debate and weeks of hate comments aimed at the girls for creating the majorette dance team at a predominantly white institution (PWI), instead of joining one at a historically Black college or university (HBCU). The team struck a nerve with some Twitter users who believed that Black traditions, like majorette dance teams, should stay at HBCUs.
Still, for Lang and her teammates, the internet backlash is largely just noise. Lang didn’t create this team “for the internet,” she insisted, but because she craved representation at the school she chose.
“I realized that nobody on [the school’s existing dance teams] looked like me. They didn't have hair like me. They didn't dance like me,” she said. “I didn't want to change who I was, how I danced, how I look, how I talk to fit in this box.”
Hip-hop style majorette dance became popular in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s with dancers first performing alongside marching bands at HBCUs. Though the exact origin is arguable, many people recognize Alcorn State University’s Golden Girls, Southern University’s Dancing Dolls, and Jackson State University’s J-Settes as some of the first iterations of what we now know as majorette teams. The practice grew over time and eventually became integral to the culture of southern Black schools. The dance style further cemented itself into popular culture in 2018 when Beyoncé paid homage to the style and HBCU iconography for her Coachella performance.
Majorette teams all bring their own personality and flair to their routines and uniforms, but many groups sport similar leotards, bedazzled ensembles, and sometimes white gloves. These embellishments help accentuate their movement even more when performing in front of big audiences, according to Essence. In majorette dance, movement needs to be huge.
“Majorette form is designed to be seen across the stadium,” Thomas DeFrantz, professor at Northwestern University and founding member of Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, said. “It's huge in its energetic debt. What it asks from the performers is just huge, what you have to do to be good at majorette. And so it's entirely physical, it's huge movement or big gestures.”
Majorette dance may be new to USC, but it was not new to Lang and many of her fellow teammates. She has been practicing majorette dance since the 4th grade and was inspired by majorette teams at HBCUs across the country, like the Alabama State University Stingettes, the Southern University Fabulous Dancing Dolls, and the Jackson State University Prancing J-Settes.
She also followed teams and dancers that hadn’t even graduated high school. The conversation around majorette mainly centers on college, but the dance style exists outside of the realm of higher education. In 2014, Lifetime indulged the growing interest in majorette dance with the reality TV series Bring It! that followed the middle and high school aged Dancing Dolls of the Dollhouse Dance Factory and their coach as they prepared for majorette competitions.
“When I tell you I was obsessed with that show, nobody could tell me nothing,” Lang said. “I even asked my mom, ‘Ma, would you move to Jackson with me so I could be a Dancing Doll?’ It was always prevalent in my life.”
So, when Lang started looking for teams to join at USC, she was disappointed not to find one in which she felt represented.
This internal monologue is likely pretty familiar for Black women and students of color at PWIs. Weighing the excitement of traditions at a PWI and the loneliness of being one of just a few people of color can be very frustrating. But with some encouragement from her mom (“girl, make the team”), Lang decided to forgo auditioning for the USC Song Girls, the school’s main spirit and dance group, and start a majorette team from scratch.
Starting college remotely at the beginning of the pandemic didn't make this dream easier. And, knowing that only 5.8% of USC students are Black wasn’t encouraging either. But neither of those things stopped Lang. She was determined: “It was really difficult, but I was like, ‘I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna find a way or make one. It's gonna happen.’”
After pitching the idea for the team to the school’s associate director of programs at USC’s recreational sports office in 2021, Lang applied to make the majorette team an officially recognized student organization and was approved in March 2022, per the Los Angeles Times.
Lang then started building her team, taking advantage of social media and approaching Black students in person. “It was never a moment that I wasn't going to take advantage of seeing another Black girl or another Black person, period,” she said.
And, it worked.
Hannah Ethridge, a junior at USC, was the captain of her high school’s majorette team in Texas. When she heard about the Cardinal Divas she knew it was a natural fit. “Majorette is my favorite form of dance, so I was like, this is perfect. Perfect for me.”
Kyla-Drew Simmons, a senior journalism major, met Lang at the beginning of the school year and they quickly became friends as Lang invited her to events and parties. “I would go to school and home and that was it,” she said. “Princess really helped me come out of my shell a little bit.”
After Lang posted an Instagram story about the majorette team she wanted to start, Simmons was immediately curious: “‘How can I be on it? If you doing it, I know it's going to be good.’”
Instagram also led the Divas to their choreographer, Jai Robinson. Lang posted a call for a choreographer on her Instagram story and Robinson, a senior at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, responded right away. Robinson has performed in stops on Janet Jackson’s Unbreakable Tour and for artists like Brandy and Chance the Rapper. Together, Robinson and Lang worked on the vision for the Divas’ style, drawing from iconic majorette teams like the J-settes and the Stingettes.
Initial tryouts for the team took place in July 2022, and the roster was announced on Instagram that September — just a few weeks before the team would go viral.
Half of the team had majorette experience at the pre-collegiate level and the other half had other dance experience and were eager to learn. They didn’t mess around. With packed schedules, the Divas managed to practice from 10 p.m. to midnight, just as the school year began in late August. Then they made their debut on September 10 at the USC Village, a shopping center for students and the greater South Central LA community, for a wellness event hosted by USC student group.
Their long practices would often come after a day’s worth of classes, rehearsals for university stage productions, and other activities like sororities. “We probably did that routine like maybe 17, 18 times … back to back to back,” Simmons said of one of the Divas’ practices. Their hard work felt especially important once the video of their September 17 performance went viral, just a week after their debut: “When you are getting some negative attention, you don't want to give people a reason to talk bad about you.”
Calls of appropriation and a reignited debate about the merit of HBCUs versus PWIs for Black college students started to obscure the Cardinal Divas’ newfound attention.
As the video went viral, between excitement and praise about the majorette team at USC, some Black users on Twitter were a bit more skeptical. Some argued that HBCU traditions, particularly majorette teams, belonged to Black colleges and didn’t have a place at other schools.
One user’s tweet response to the video got more than 1000 likes: “This is great and all but why not just go to an HBCU…”
This debate is complicated and there is no universal right or wrong answer to the fundamental question: Where are Black students allowed to practice Black tradition?
DeFrantz said that it’s inevitable that majorette dancing will show up in predominantly white spaces, but cautions that even Black people who are performing Black art should be aware and respectful of their origins.
“The question becomes, how do we share this information and remain aware of the histories that produce the form, and most importantly, pay attention to the spectacular Black femmes who are still practicing the forms in the places where it grew up?” he said.
DeFrantz also proposed the idea that dancers performing majorette at PWIs may not be doing the exact same thing as those performing majorette dance within and for the HBCU community.
“I think a challenge is that when we are Black folks engaged in Black form, but not in Black community, we might need to recognize that we're actually doing something else. Majorette dancing emerged at HBCUs and in Black spaces to feed a Black public a certain kind of creativity,” he said. “As it stretches into other parts of the U.S. and beyond, it has to become something else.”
But that doesn’t mean there is no value or greatness coming from a group that wants to highlight the form for a new crowd. “It has to feed a different audience,” DeFrantz said, “and respond to different tensions and provide a different set of cultural values for a different community.”
The team said they understand and respect the history and cultural origin of the dance, but don't think it can only exist in one environment.
”Our inspiration comes from HBCUs,” Simmons said. “We're not at all trying to misrepresent majorette. We are trying to embrace it and we're trying to have this experience for our college careers. We are Black people trying to do our Black dance style wherever we are.”
The Cardinal Divas aren’t the first all-Black majorette team at a non-HBCU. Georgia State University, the University of California at Berkeley, and even fellow southern California school San Diego State University (where USC alumna and Grammy-nominee Saweetie began her college career as a part of the school’s majorette team) have had majorette teams for years now.
Lang said she was surprised by the backlash coming from people in the Black community, but she didn’t let the negativity get to her or her teammates. “I would say the negativity definitely went down, but majorette as a whole entity, it became such a bigger topic,” she said. "And that's all I wanted.”
Many online did recognize Lang’s ultimate goal: To create space for herself and other Black students to exercise part of their culture. “Proud of you, Sis! Folks are going to bite our style regardless of whether we try to keep it to ourselves or not,” April Reign, creator of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, tweeted. “You carved out a special place at your school and your name will always be linked to it. Congratulations!”
Choruses of USC and HBCU alumni spoke up, too. “I'm a 2007 USC Grad and I would have killed for this!” one USC alum tweeted before asking how they could support the team. “We deserve our culture everywhere we go. Keep bringing the fire,” another person chimed in.
One user, an HBCU alumna and mom of a current USC student, tweeted this in response to the video and the onslaught of hate aimed at the team: “... I appreciate you putting our style on a major scale. USC football is huge and whether folks wanted to see it or not, they did. Culture isn’t restricted to HBCUs. Culture is for us wherever we go.”
For Lang and her teammates, bringing majorette dance to a new audience helps the practice grow and can even inspire young Black kids who wouldn’t have known about it otherwise.
“I feel like any way to continue to uplift Black art and Black history and Blackness, it should always be applauded,” Lang said of the Cardinal Divas. “It should never be a conversation of who gets to be able to showcase it and who gets to be a part of it.”
Thanks to videos like the one of the Cardinal Divas, TikTok trends, and the incredible talent of majorette teams across the country and on social media, majorette is showing up in pop culture in a major way. After the video went viral on Twitter, Google search activity for the term “majorette” saw the biggest spike ever, according to Google Trends. As of February, TikTok videos with the tag “majorette” accumulated more than 1.2 billion views.
“Everybody knows what majorette is. Everybody's tagging majorette,” Lang said. “And it just makes my heart flutter to see that happen because it's like, wow, this is exactly what I wanted. And now, it's actually happening.”
With only a year until she graduates, Lang is doing whatever she can to achieve her next goal for the Divas: Getting onto the field and performing at halftime.
The girls share Lang’s goal of performing on the field at halftime, but for some of the senior members graduating this spring, they want to see the Cardinal Divas legacy years in the future. “When I come back as an alumni for homecoming, I want to be able to see Cardinal Divas get bigger and bigger,” Simmons said.
Beyond performing at home games, the team hopes they can be some kind of representation for prospective Black students, whether they're interested in the Cardinal Divas or not.
“I've always been one for my Blackness and I was never going to shy away from that, even coming to USC,” Lang said. “I want to be able to tell Black stories that never get told … I felt like this was my way to continue to bring light and bring joy back into our own community.”
Credits:
Photographer: Lenne Chai
Photo Assistant: Ara Bevacqua
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