Frolic is a Fortnite Emote with a long history. It is based on a dance first performed by a user of Japanese video site Niconico, which is pretty much Japan’s very own answer to YouTube. The dancer, known as Nomo Moe (or @noumoe913 on Twitter) uploaded a video of herself dancing in a vegetable garden (be warned, there are some English curse words on the video captions) way back in 2011. The video’s description seems to be saying that the dance is supposed to help her vegetables grow. The video went modestly viral on Niconico, but when someone posted an edited version on YouTube, it really took off, attracting millions of views, and transforming Nomo Moe into a vegetable dancing legend.
The song Nomo Moe is dancing to has an even longer history than her dance. It’s called “Ievan Polkka”, which is Savo Finnish for “Eva’s Polka”. The lyrics were written by Finnish composer Eino Kettunen in 1928 to the tune of a traditional Finnish polka, which is in turn based on a Russian folk song dating back to the late 19th century.
The version Nomo Moe dances to (and which is used in the official Fortnite Frolic music video above) is much more recent. It was produced by Otomania for the 2009 PSP rhythm-action game Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA. The in-game version in Fortnite is yet another rendition, presumably produced especially for the game.
