uikit, emberjs, and the {

I am trying to use UIKit for the theme of an EmberJS project. I am finding that the attributes for UIKit that require a { and } don't seem to work. For example a button with a drop down requires:

data-uk-dropdown="{mode:'click'}"

but doesn't work when rendered in EmberJS. If I take the {mode:'click'} off, it works fine as a hover so I know JS is working.

Do I need to escape it? Thanks and let me know!