Old Footage of a French President dancing with his wife? Know the truth…

A viral cha-cha dance video has been making rounds on social media, claiming that the small boy in the clip later became the current French President and married the young woman dancing alongside the boy.

However, the Fact Crescendo team found that the narration attached to the video clip was fabricated. Let’s look at the claim in detail.

Social Media Claim

One of the Facebook users posted a video of an energetic cha-cha dance performed by a boy and a young woman. This dancing video was attached to a claim that the boy went on to become the current French President, Emmanuel Macron, while the young woman is his wife.

Below is the full video clip with the caption, “This video of 1988 is interesting not only because of the dance sequence but also because the boy is the current President of France, and the dancer, his teacher, his current Wife”.

Facebook Post | Archived Link

Recently, on August 12, 2023, the same video claim was posted by a Facebook user showing the exact video of a boy and young woman dancing together with the above claim. The following video was captured and recorded by the above Facebook user. Facebook Post | Archived Link

The clip was viral among WhatsApp users as well.

Fact Check

Using the InWid-We-Verify tool, we searched for the origins of the viral clip and found several video clips showing the scene of a boy and a young woman dancing together.

A snapshot of the cha-cha dance between a boy and a young woman was found on the Getty Images website, an American visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for businesses and consumers. The photo shows an exact move and dancing, as seen in the video.

Getty Images describes the image as a scene from an episode from the “So You Think You Can Dance” TV show 2016. Jake Monreal, the young man in the video, and Jenna Johnson, his companion, danced on stage.

Getty Images Link | Archived Link

Additionally, this dancing video can also be seen and found on YouTube on July 12, 2016, published by user Jenna Johnson Fans with the title “Jenna Johnson & Jake Monreal: SYTYCD Next Generation Week 1 Cha Cha”.

Hence, it’s clear that the video is not a clip of young French President Macron and his current wife dancing together in 1988.

YouTube Link | Archived Link

The above claim has been recurring in many parts of the world, and Factcrescendo India debunked the same claim in 2019. The current President of France, Emmanuel Macron, born on 21 December 1977, is 45. Serving as French premiership since 2017, Macron was re-elected as the French president in 2022. He is married to Brigitte Macron, born in April 1953, a teacher at young Macron’s high school, La Providence High School in Amiens. They met during a theatre workshop that she was giving when young Macron was only a 15-year-old student, and she was a 39-year-old teacher, but they only became a couple once he was 18. This background and age difference in the couple resulted in the viral video's misattributed caption.

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Conclusion

Fact Crescendo's team found the narrative given the viral clip claiming that the small child and the young woman later becoming the French President and his wife is misleading. The video clip is taken from a 2016 episode of an American TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance.” The boy in the video was Jake Monreal, and the woman with him was Jenna Johnson.