In 2010, an aggro rave dance with lots of stomping and shuffling went viral. The Melbourne Shuffle also took off in China where youths started performing it all over public squares. This morphed into its own shuffle style known as Ghost Step or 'Guǐ bù’ in Mandarin. It’s a more mechanical, “military” style approach to shuffling, with very little hip movement and faster, layered moves. More than a decade later, it’s no longer a sensation, and you can't see it on the streets anymore. What are those dancers from back then doing now?

Ghost Step by Loki Peng combines archival footage and interviews with influential Ghost Step dancers like GA Yinya, ZSD Junyu, Wolf Yuto and Yanhuang Maixiao. For many of these dancers, the internet led them to dance and brought them into the outside world in unprecedented ways.The documentary includes material from multiple sources, including: Youku (an early Chinese video platform), YouTube, old television programs, as well as personal archives shared directly by the dancers themselves. These materials reflect how shuffle culture circulated online during its most popular period.

Both the internet and dance deal with the ephemeral and the fleeting. How does the internet, a place of immateriality, interact with dance, the most embodied art form? How can we still lose ourselves and find physical freedom in a digital world cowering under corporate monopoly and overrun with ads