Delaware’s own ‘Bieber’ is a TikTok star thanks to his dance moves

Giovanni R.D. Branch Jr., known as Giovanni Bieber, is a Delaware dancer who has gained popularity for his energetic dancing at local events and on TikTok.
Branch’s videos, often filmed in public spaces or his basement, have garnered millions of views and a large social media following.
He embraces both fans and critics, enjoying the attention his unique dance style attracts.

Hockessin’s Giovanni R.D. Branch Jr. dances like no one’s watching, but someone always is ― even when he’s alone in his basement.

Branch, who is known by his stage name Giovanni Bieber, draws attention any time he starts dancing, whether it’s in front of a DJ at a local club, while watching a national act perform or on TikTok, where one of his videos has 1.7 million views.

If he looks familiar, it’s probably because he turned your head since he dances at any opportunity and attends many of Delaware’s biggest events.

That was him dropping splits on the dancefloor at Wilmington’s St. Anthony Italian Festival last year.

That also was him dressed in full lederhosen showing off his moves under the tent at the Delaware Saengerbund Oktoberfest in Ogletown.

And if you’re drawn to the nightlife of Wilmington’s Trolley Square, he’s usually front and center with bombastic dances as DJs or cover bands perform.

‘Nobody dances like he dances’

Among his favorite spots to show off his moves are Kelly’s Logan House and Catherine Rooney’s, where hip-hop and pop songs put ants in his pants. He also can be spotted at the Trolley Tap House and the Trolley Square Oyster House, usually skipping drinks and focusing on the music.

In recent weeks, Logan House General Manager Dan Dougherty shared a video on Instagram of Branch dancing to a DJ, injecting an extra level of excitement to the night as others on the dance floor cheered him on, stared with open mouths or laughed at his antics.

“He really stands out because most of the time the only dancing is just girls bending over and twerking and guys behind them doing a little dance,” Dougherty says. “Nobody dances like he dances. Once he starts, people start taking out their phones and filming. It’s quite the scene.”

Spend just a few minutes with him in Trolley Square at night and he’ll be stopped by several times. Some know him from TikTok and others just from seeing him boogie at area clubs. But they all have something in common: their eyes light up when they spot him and they have to say hi to Delaware’s own Biebs.

Fans and haters ― all are loved

The baby-faced, soft-spoken 23-year-old dancer is fearless with his dance moves, which is part of the reason why he stands out. He loves dancing and the attention that comes with it just as much.

“I’ll take any attention. I love it. Love, love fame,” Branch says. “I got some haters, but I love them.”

So whether spectators are smiling because they are truly enjoying his routine or are laughing at the uniqueness (and sometimes ridiculousness) of his one-man bopping, it’s all the same to him.

The videos on his pages are mostly self-recorded at home. The ones that show him dancing in public are usually shot by strangers who tag him before he shares them. And it has all resulted in a large following on TikTok and Instagram, where he has 146,000 and 63,000 followers, respectively.

Going viral

At last week’s Chris Brown concert at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, random people recorded a pair of videos: one of him dancing in the aisle shot by a stranger in the upper deck who spotted his distinctive dance and another in his row who just had to capture his ebullient energy while he was doing a split.

He started his TikTok page in 2019 and really began attracting eyeballs in 2020 thanks to videos of him dancing to songs such as “Ric Flair Drip” by Metro Boomin and Offset and “My X” by Raw Sremmurd.

But it was in 2023 when his basement video featuring a bland white drop ceiling really went viral and now stands at 1.7 million views.

In it, the William Penn High School graduate is wearing a black Adidas track suit jacket with white stripes while dancing to “Beez in the Trap” by Nicki Minaj and 2 Chainz ― a song complete with a First State reference: “It’s Delaware, Connecticut, it’s New Jersey got hella bricks/It’s Queens, Brooklyn, and yeah, they wildin’.”

In the years since, he has flooded TikTok and Instagram with videos of himself dancing, singing and lip-synching.

What mom thinks

Before he was in the clubs (and adopted the Bieber moniker in tribute to Justin Bieber, one of his favorite performers), he danced and sang since he was 4, fueled by the attention it earned him.

His father Ronnie D. Branch Sr., a former boxer who fought four professional fights in the Philadelphia Spectrum, would show him videos of R&B soul singer Jackie Wilson and King of Pop Michael Jackson dancing.

“And [Ronnie] would have him keep trying it until he could do it. People think he learned at a dance school, but it was at home,” says Michaela Branch, his mother.

He would attend all the school dances he could and even landed on the Philadelphia Soul junior dance team called Jr. Soulmates.

The same kind of reactions he gets today, he got back then on a smaller scale. As Michaela puts it, “He always lit up the room and could get a crowd going. We love it.”

The pandemic hit just after he started posting his dances online and that’s when he transformed from Giovanni Branch into Giovanni Bieber.

Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at [email protected] or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).

‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’

‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.delawareonline.com ’