“Here Comes the Hurricane”

This chapter examines the convergence of monstrosity, performance, and environmental storytelling through the lens of viral hurricane dance trends on social media. Focusing on a wave of comedic parodies of Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song,” it explores how social media-based performances dramatize ecological devastation, displacement, and resistance. Drawing from the author’s dual background as a marine biologist and performing artist, the chapter argues that dancers engage in embodied monstrosity—performing chaos, fear, and resilience in the face of climate trauma. Rather than distancing from disaster, performers lean into its absurdity, using humor and movement to reclaim agency in the wake of institutional abandonment. The chapter situates monstrosity not as a symbol of fear, but as a productive space for collective survival. The analysis in this chapter showcases ways movement and popular culture can function as mechanisms for processing climate trauma and reclaiming agency, particularly among coastal communities disproportionately affected by environmental crisis. Through this lens, the viral dance becomes a form of “resist-dance”: a theatrical, digital, and cultural practice that transforms dread into defiance.