Stravinsky and Nijinsky

The most infamous riot in the history of the performing arts began with the violins in Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” But more remarkable than the fistfight was the way the piece revolutionized classical music and ballet.

On the night of May 29, 1913, an elegant Parisian crowd assembled for the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s eagerly anticipated new ballet, “The Rite of Spring.” The opening seemed promising, but then the violins kicked in with a pulsing chord so dissonant that it made spectators wince. As the orchestra continued, the audience hissed and booed. They rose to their feet and shouted—some defending the music, but most denouncing it. People began whacking each other with canes, umbrellas, and, before long, bare fists. Stravinsky’s musical revolution had arrived.

Prelude to “The Rite”

By one account, the idea for “The Rite of Spring” came to Stravinsky in a dream. He envisioned a pagan rebirth ritual, with people throwing themselves before vengeful gods. Rather than a cheerful celebration of springtime, it was a dark and superstitious rite. To compose music appropriate for such a vision, Stravinsky tossed aside convention and broke new ground in rhythm and harmony. He constructed atonal chords never heard before and developed a meter so complex that he struggled to accurately record it on paper. At times in the piece, parts of the orchestra actually seem to be playing against each other.

Stravinsky first performed “The Rite of Spring” for ballet director Sergei Diaghilev and orchestra conductor Pierre Monteux. Both men were shocked and overwhelmed. Later, Monteux wrote that he didn’t understand one note of it and wanted to flee the room. Nevertheless, plans for the ballet got under way. Diaghilev entrusted the choreography to dance phenom Vaslav Nijinsky, whose steps proved just as inspired as the music.

Concept, costumes, and set designs by Nicholas Roerich.

The first signs of trouble came during rehearsals. The ballerinas complained that Nijinsky’s flat-footed, straight-knee jumps jarred them to their bones, and the musicians struggled to keep up with Stravinsky’s galloping pace. At one point, after practicing a particularly dissonant section, the orchestra couldn’t help but burst into nervous laughter.

The Least Quiet of Riots

On opening night, the scene was chaotic. Only minutes into the performance, the audience’s reaction was so loud that the ballerinas couldn’t hear the music. Horrified, Stravinsky fled backstage to find Nijinsky standing on a chair desperately calling out the time for the dancers. Meanwhile, Diaghilev was frantically turning on and off the house lights in an attempt to pacify the crowd. By intermission, the police had arrived, and the theater manager took to the stage, begging the audience to calm down.

The Ballet Russes 1913

The truth is that the spectators were reacting as much to the dancing as to the music. “The Rite of Spring” contained no elegant arabesques or ballerinas in tutus. Instead, the dancers moved more with their hips than their feet, evoking something raw and primitive. What’s more, they dressed as pagan tribesmen, wearing rough tunics and stylized masks on their faces. It was the antithesis of classical ballet. In one scene, the dancers encircle a girl who stands transfixed with fear. Tribal elders swarm around this “chosen one” until she begins to leap frantically into the air. Her dance becomes more and more frenzied until she finally collapses dead—a ritual sacrifice to spring.

After the Revolution

Vaslav Nijinsky and an unnamed ballerina.

For several more nights, Diaghilev and Nijinsky performed “The Rite” to outraged Parisians. Stravinsky, however, grew too sick to attend. Five days after the ballet’s premiere, he fell dangerously ill with typhoid fever. But the following March, the piece was played again in Paris as an orchestral work (without the ballet). This time, instead of rioting, the audience cheered and then carried the composer aloft on their shoulders.

These days, “The Rite of Spring” is more likely to elicit polite applause. The innovations that made it revolutionary nearly a century ago are staples of dance and music today. In the world of ballet, “The Rite” introduced the idea that dance didn’t have to be refined to be significant, and Nijinsky’s choreography deeply influenced modern dance pioneers, such as Martha Graham. In the realm of music, the impact was just as profound, advancing the notion that abrasive music could also be beautiful. The genius of the piece is that it contains all the basic principles of a successful composition—compelling melodies, dynamic rhythms, contrast, repetition—while also pushing them to extremes. After the scandalous riot, it only took a few short years for “The Rite of Spring” to be widely embraced. By the 1920s, it was being performed in the United States, and by the 1940s, it had become background music in a Disney movie. By expanding the boundaries of acceptability, Stravinsky made room for all the dissonant music of the 20th century, from Arnold Schoenberg to Sonic Youth, and changed the definition of music forever.

The Mouse & The Musician

In 1940, “The Rite of Spring” took a big leap from avant-garde to mainstream when Stravinsky let Walt Disney use the piece for an animated movie. In the score of Fantasia, a truncated version of “The Rite” plays during the scenes depicting the beginning of life on Earth, from the primordial ooze to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Years later, Stravinsky wrote critically about Disney, claiming the film company had pressured him into licensing the rights to the music. He went on to describe the performance as “a dangerous misunderstanding” of his composition. Disney representatives were baffled and offended. In response, they released photos of Stravinsky in the studio holding up animation mockups and smiling.

The Kirov Ballet

(YouTube link)

__________________________

The above article by Elizabeth Lunday is reprinted with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

“Soul Train” was one of the longest-running syndicated shows in television history and played a critical role in spreading the music of black America to the world, offering wide exposure to musicians such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I am shocked and deeply saddened at the sudden passing of my friend, colleague and business partner Don Cornelius,” said Quincy Jones, according to the Associated Press. “Don was a visionary pioneer and a giant in our business. Before MTV there was ‘Soul Train.’ That will be the great legacy of Don Cornelius. His contributions to television, music and our culture as a whole will never be matched. My heart goes out to Don’s family and loved ones.”

Mr. Cornelius, a former disc jockey, created the show in 1970 in Chicago on WCIU-TV and served as its writer, producer and host. Quickly becoming a success, the show was broadcast nationally in 1971, beginning its 35-year run. Besides the performers, the program showcased young dancers who would strut their stuff, laying the groundwork for countless dance programs , including current hits like Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance?” and MTV’s “America’s Best Dance Crew.” “We had a show that kids gravitated to,” Mr. Cornelius said.

Cornelius’ death is being investigated as a possible suicide. He was 75. Link

(Image credit: MadVision Entertainment)

This video was produced by the comedy duo Rhett & Link, but there are two professional dancers inside the costume. Keep your eye out for the special guest cameo. -via Laughing Squid

The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

Dance marathons started out as innocent fun but wound up as grim as the Depression that ended them.

Post-World War I America was in a mood to break all records: popular events included endurance kissing and hand-holding contests, eating marathons, and flagpole sitting. A guy named Shipwreck Kelly became  national celebrity after sitting atop a flagpole for 7 days, 13 hours, and 13 minutes. When someone challenged Bill Williams to push a peanut up Pike’s Peak with his nose, he agreed. It took him 30 days, and he won $500 (415 euros) for the feat. It all had to do with the mood of the day. But nothing caught the public’s fancy as much as dance marathons.

A CRAZE IS BORN

The birth of U.S. dance marathons can be traced to early 1923 when, inspired by a record  set in Britain a few weeks earlier, Miss Alma Cummings took to the floor of the first American dance marathon, which was held in New York City’s somewhat seedy Audobon Ballroom. Cummings wore out six males partners over the next 27 hours and won a world record. Within a week, a French college student broke that record. A few days later, Cummings retook the title, which was soon broken again, this time by a Cleveland, Ohio, salesgirl. The challenge was on.

A few weeks after Cummings’ win,  a Texas dance hall owner got the brilliant idea of charging spectators admission (25¢ during the day, $1 at night). He gave his first winner -Miss Magdalene Williams- a prize of $50 (42 euros). On April 16, Cleveland’s Madeline Gottschick beat William’s record with a time of 66 hours. Within days, that record was broken three times. On June 10, Bernie Brand danced for 217 hours (more than 9 days) and went home with $5,000 (4,151 euros) in prizes.

In just a few months in 1923, the dance marathon had swept the nation and the world. And so it continued throughout the 1920s.

THE DOWNBEAT

The deaths of a few supposedly healthy young people -including 27-year-old Homer Morehouse from heart failure after 87 hours of dancing- brought some unwelcome attention. Officials banded together with church groups (who saw the marathons as immoral) and movie theater owners (who saw the marathons as competition) to try to stomp out the fad. Critics called the contestants “dangerous, useless, and disgraceful,” and they even likened them to the dancing manias of 14th-century Europe.

TAKE A LOAD OFF

In an effort to save their golden goose, promoters added rest periods during which the dancers could lie down on cots, take hot showers, or have their injuries seen to. Some even let dancers take a short walk outside, but eating was still done while dancing, at chest-high buffet tables set up mid-floor. The length and spacing of rest periods varied from contest to contest: 15 minutes every hour, 11 minutes out of every 90 minutes, and so on. Another change was that couples versus individual contestants became the norm. But a dancer wasn’t stuck with one partner for the duration. If your partner gave out, you could dance solo for a set amount of time while seeking another, healthier partner in the group.  Now, thanks to rest periods and partners who could hold you up while you slept, a marathon could last for weeks. But watching a dance floor full of droopy couples wasn’t going to hold the crowd’s attention, so vaudeville skits were added. So were professional dancers, who worked the crowd and posed as good guys and bad guys, like modern day pro wrestlers.

A marathon that started with 100 contestants would dwindle to the hard core after a week or two. The remaining couple would drag themselves across the floor, but at specific times the emcee would make an announcement, and the dancers would be expected to run a ten-minute footrace or perform an all-out foxtrot or tango -the losers of which would be eliminated.

TALK ABOUT DEPRESSING

Marathons were well established by the arrival of the Depression in 1929, and they became the prefect escape. If you could scrape together the admission, you could come in out of the weather and be entertained; if you were young and strong enough, you could enter and try to win a few thousand dollars. Even if you lost, you’d be well taken care of  while you lasted: three square meals, snacks, and medical teams to treat your injuries and give you rubdowns.

Of course, you could be mistreated, too, by “grinds,” show employees whose job it was to prod contestants who fell behind, or generally harass the dancers to keep things exciting. Promoters staged weddings and fights and it was hard to differentiate between what was staged or genuine. But there was plenty of real drama: sleep-deprived dancers suffered hallucinations and delusions, hysteria, and bouts of temporary amnesia.

THE DANCE IS ENDED

By the mid-1930s, the contests had lost their glitter. What had been lighthearted entertainment became a struggle for survival, and it showed. Dance marathons weren’t fun anymore. The country was in a Depression in more ways than one. The marathoners, once viewed a respectable and plucky, were now viewed as being no better than the vagrants who traveled the country looking for food or work. They became a reminder of the filed American dream; a symbol of just how low the country had fallen.

One by one, states and cities across the country banned dance marathons. The shows continued on a small scale until the mid-1940s, but their heyday had long passed. Danceathons gave way to walkathons, which gave way to skateathons, which birthed the roller derby. But that’s another story.

(YouTube link)

______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

Following in the Broadway tradition using the most unlikely subjects for musicals, Ana Serrano, Romeo Candido, and Carmen De Jesus are turning the story of the dancing inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines into a web-only musical production. It will debut on the prisondancer YouTube channel in 12 episodes beginning in March. -via Buzzfeed

There are no new dances, just new music. The original soundtrack for this video is here. Meanwhile, while I was trying to turn off the annotations, I accidentally hit the “snowflake” button on this video. Try it yourself and see what happens! -via Jason Kottke

Neatorama presents

You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out,
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey Pokey
And you turn it all around
That’s what it’s all about!

You put your left foot in,
You put your left foot out,

Etc. etc. etc.

For some reason, “The Hokey Pokey” always brings people up; it makes people happier. Why is the Hokey Pokey so popular and beloved? Well, you can come up with your own theory, but no other song seems to symbolize a good time for people and bring a smile to their faces to quite the same extent.

In 1942, Irish songwriter and publisher Jimmy Kennedy, best known for “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” created a dance and an instruction song to go with it called “The Hokey Cokey.” Written to entertain Canadian troops stationed in London, this song is similar to, but not the same as “The Hokey Pokey” we all know.

Composer Al Tabor was also entertaining Canadian troops in wartime London, and in 1942, he wrote a participation dance called “The Hokey Pokey.” He claimed the name came from the London ice cream vendors of his youth, called “Hokey Pokey Men.” The accompanying dance was very similar to Kennedy’s.

In 1946, totally unaware of the British “Hokey Pokey” and “Hokey Cokey,” two Scranton, Pennsylvania musicians, Robert Degan and Joe Brier, recorded “The Hokey Pokey Dance” to entertain summer vacationers at Poconos Mountain resorts. The song was a regional favorite at dances and resorts for the rest of the forties, but that still isn’t the song we know today.

As if to confuse matters even more, British bandleader Gerry Hoey also claimed authorship in 1940 of a similar tune “The Hoey Oka.”

The general belief is that Charles Mack, Taft Baker, and Larry Laprise wrote the American version of the song, “The Hokey Pokey,” in 1949 to entertain skiers at the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho. The song was a hit at resorts, so Laprise recorded it. It flopped, but Degan and Brier found out about it and sued Laprise for ripping off their “Hokey Pokey Dance.” Despite the fact that his version came out after theirs, Laprise won the rights to anything to do with “The Hokey Pokey.”

(YouTube link)
The 1953 recording by Ray Anthony and his Orchestra featuring vocals by Jo Ann Greer.

In 1953, Ray Anthony’s orchestra recorded it -a double sided single with “The Bunny Hop”- and it went to #13 on the charts. This is the version we know today.

The origins of the song go back further than this, however. Some argue that “The Hokey Pokey” (or “Cokey”) is a corruption of “hocus pocus,” the familiar term used by magicians. “Hocus pocus” derives, in turn, from Catholic Mass: hoc corpus meum (“this is my body”), indicating the conversion of the communion bread into the body of Jesus Christ.

The dance that goes along with the song, in which the participants all dance in a ring, putting the relevant arm or foot in and out, and then shaking it about, goes back a fair way, too. Similar dances and songs were recorded in Robert Chambers’ Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1826), and other versions have been traced to seventeenth-century minstrels.

“The Hokey-Pokey” would appear to ridicule the religious rituals of the Shakers (so named for their jerky movements while engaging in worship), who both danced and sang during their services.

(YouTube link)
Comedian Jim Breuer shows us what the Hokey Pokey would sound like performed by AC/DC.

But the earliest accurate record, so far, of the song we all know and love is from an account, dated 1857, of two sisters from Canterbury, England, on a trip to Bridgewater, New Hampshire. During their visit, they taught the locals a song that went something like this:

I put my right hand in.
I put my right hand out,
I give my hand a shake, shake, shake,
And I turn myself about.

Apparently, the performance of the song -called “Right Elbow In” and several verses long- was accompanied by “appropriate gestures” and was danced in a slow, rhythmic motion.

Whether or not an earlier reference will ever be found, it seems the origins of “The Hokey Pokey” do not lie in America, as currently claimed. The song was merely exported there.

The song’s great popularity, however, remains in the hearts and minds of countless millions of Americans, and “The Hokey Pokey” is definitely a part of Americana.

(YouTube link)
The hip hop version of the Hokey Pokey by The Puppies was used for this dance recital from 2005.

(Title image source: I Can Has Cheezburger)

Holiday travelers passing through Denver International Airport last week were treated to a selection of Swing classics by about 100 dancers from the non-profit organization Community-Minded Dance.  The performance had been coordinated by the airport’s Art and Culture Program.

The Dutch National Ballet rehearses for a performance at TEDxAmsterdam 2011, an independently organized TED event, November 25th in the Netherlands. Narrated by Rutger Hauer. -via Everlasting Blort

The dance of death (usually represented by a skeleton) has been a recurring theme in art and literature for centuries -at least! BibliOddysey has a sampling of such illustrations from the Heinrich Hein University of Düsseldorf collection, ranging from 1736 to the 20th century. Link

George Balanchine, the charismatic director who ran the New York City Ballet and its School of American Ballet, rethought pointe shoes. He worked with Salvatore Capezio to develop and patent pointe shoes to produced the exact lines of the foot and leg he thought beautiful, and to be quieter and less clunky than earlier pointe shoes. He required all dancers (not just the principals) to go on pointe — and not for a few short moments, but for hours at a time.

Laemmli argues that the new shoes forced dancers’ bodies to move in new ways. Dancers on this pointe regimen developed characteristically long, lean leg muscles. Balanchine also encouraged dancers to let the shoes remake their bodies, including developing bunions that gave the foot just the right line. And as their bodies were remade, dancers became “like IBM machines,” modern and indistinguishable.

Link -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Flickr user kirikiri)

For the third year, the Dance Your PhD competition has gathered videos of graduate students interpreting their doctoral dissertations in dance form. All 53 entries for 2011 are posted at ScienceNOW. The video shown here, by Anderson Mills, is called “Human-Based Percussion and Self-Similarity Detection in Electroacoustic Music.” The dissertation is about teaching a computer (representated here by a “robot”) to recognize rhythm in human music. Link -via Boing Boing

If you can dance while wearing a marching band uniform with a drum strapped to your belly, then the world is pretty much your oyster. In this video, the Ohio University Marching 110 perform “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. -via The Daily What

Watch scientists, researchers, and assorted geeks get down! McGill University in Montreal gathered scientists, students, and volunteers to make this dance and lipdub video. Their sponsor, Medicom, is making a donation to the Goodman Cancer Research Centre for each view the video gets. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Honestly, bodies aren’t supposed to work like that, much less look graceful doing it. This footage was taken at the Braun Battle of the Year USA qualifier in Los Angeles on August 20th. The winning crew was Battle Born, who advances to the ultimate tournament November 19th in Montpellier, France. Link -via I Am Bored

This video is a fast-moving historical fashion show with dancing! The Viral Factory produced it for the grand opening of Westfield Stratford City on September 13th, which I believe is a shopping center, although it’s kind of hard to tell from the website. Music by Tristin Norwell. Link -Thanks, Vincenzo!

Caffeine does strange things to people, and apparently to birds! This cockatiel is so excited about a cup of coffee that he dances to the tune of a stirring spoon. -via Arbroath

Redditor webby_mc_webberson took his son and his dog to a beach in Wicklow, Ireland and snapped this picture. He said the dog “loves to express her emotions in the form of dance. Today she was feeling vertical.” Link

Shena took Cyriak’s animation Cows & Cows & Cows and turned it into an interpretive dance. Now if Cyriak were to take the dancers out of this video and manipulate them into his vision of dance, that would be …just like Cyriak. -via The Daily What

Whee! Four skydivers do a choreographed dance in the Skydive Arena wind tunnel in Prague, Czech Republic. The music is “Fot i Hose” by Casiokids. -via Metafilter

Of course, you’ve wanted your own dancing Pixar lamp ever since you first saw it, right? Jonathan Foote created a chorus line of lamps, seen here performing at Maker Faire. Get the details on how he did it at his blog, waxing prolix. Link -via Laughing Squid

(YouTube link)

Apparently, high school in the 70s was more far-out than I thought. According to the YouTube poster, this was from a 70s-era science class video; the lecture at the beginning was removed to highlight the wicked groovy dance-athon. I can’t say I learned anything from this, but everyone really seems to be enjoying their time in Biology II.

Thanks for sharing, Adam Lukey!

Ah, the Father/Daughter Wedding Dance … the loving glance of a parent and child, the awkward swaying to cheesy music …

Well, not at Brooke Lavin’s wedding! At her wedding, her pop Bill showed some of his smooth moves: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via The Frisky

I’m not normally one for choreographed dance routines, however if you check out Razy Gogonea’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent, I think you will agree this one is pretty sweet. Skip to about 1:30 in the video to see his recreations of iconic scenes from The Matrix that put Keanu Reeves slow motion bullet dodging moves to shame. Link

An android, meaning the Android phone mascot, dances up a storm in Taiwan. Impressive, for a guy in an inflatable costume! -via I Am Bored

Take an Xbox Kinect to a convention and look what you get! This unnamed fan at Boston’s PAX East gaming convention gives his all to the game Dance Central. Link -via Buzzfeed

The BBC has a TV program called Fast and Loose. It’s a game show with a segment called Interpretive Dance, featuring David Armand, whom you might remember as the guy behind the hilarious interpretation of “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia. Now he has a regular job doing what he does so well. -via Arbroath

Lord of the Potty Dance! This Czech troupe is talented. There was no need at all to inset a Riverdance video. -via the Presurfer

While some complain about the snow, this little guy dances for joy! Or maybe he just really likes the song “Auld Lang Syne.” It’s a Happy Feet New Year! -Thanks, özi!

(YouTube link)

Halftime at the UConn-Florida State basketball game in Hartford last week. The performer goes by the name Christopher or Christopher from Las Vegas. -via The Daily What

A short video clip of a dog that appears to be dancing salsa and doing some great moves to the song “Salsa Dura” by the New York City based band La Excelencia.

Link

(YouTube Link)

This group of kids performing urban dance on a street corner in the rain gives ballet a modern twist.

Link

Men who were judged to be good dancers had a varied repertoire and more moves that involved tilting and twisting the torso and neck.

But the majority of men displayed highly repetitive moves that used their arms and legs, but not the rest of their bodies.

“It’s rare that someone is described as a good dancer if they are flinging their arms about but not much else,” said Nick Neave, a psychologist at the University of Northumbria, who led the study.

“Think about a head banger. Their head movement has a large amplitude, but it’s not changing direction or showing any kind of variability. That’s a bad dancer. Or someone who is just twisting and turning left and right? That’s a bad dancer too.”

The article includes a video of a dancing avatar demonstrating “bad” dancing and “good” dancing. Next research needed: the science of getting a man to even try dancing at all. Link -via Metafilter

I think I’ve seen every movie represented here -and there are about 40 of them. How about you? -via Metafilter

Watch me do the Ugly Dance! Click around at the bottom to make it look even sillier. This generator is a promotion from the Swedish band Fulkultur. It worked; I can’t get their song out of my head now. You can upload your picture and make yourself dance. Link -via the Presurfer

Here’s a video clip of NASA’s All-Terrain, Hex-Limbed, Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (yes, with the clever acronym ATHLETE), a remote roverbot designed to explore Mars and the Moon, busting a move. Link [embedded YouTube clip]

Andrei Melanyin, seated with his legs crossed, watches the tanks practice from inside a beige tent in the bleachers. As the director of The Invincible and the Legendary, he’s looking for mistakes with a practiced eye. Melanyin is the head of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater of Russia, which includes the world-famous Bolshoi Theater, and a professor at the Institute of Modern Art. “They asked me to come in and do something theatrical,” he says of the government organizers of the event. “They wanted something more than just a technical demonstration.” The show he produced skips like a fake gemstone across Russian history, from the violent founding of the nation out of the Kiev city-state in the 12th century to demonstrations of hand-to-hand combat, set to the music of Ravel’s Bolero, by modern paratroopers. The program also includes a reenactment of a raid  on a terrorist camp by attack helicopters, a display by combat dogs and a parade of heavy vehicles running obstacles. And the tanks—not just jumping ramps, but choreographed in a synchronized dance routine.

It’s part of the Russian Arms Expo going on this week. Read more about the tank ballet at Popular Mechanics. Link -via Boing Boing

Jane Korman’s 89-year-old father Adolek Kohn arrived at Auschwitz in a cattle car over 65 years ago. In 2009, he returned to Auschwitz and other locations in Poland associated with the Holocaust and did a victory dance with his daughter and several of his grandchildren. See parts two and three of this project as well. When Korman first exhibited the videos in Australia, she received quite a bit of criticism:

Many Jewish survivors have reacted gravely to the video, accusing her of disrespect. Yet Korman told Australian daily The Jewish News that “it might be disrespectful, but he [her father] is saying ‘we’re dancing, we should be dancing, we’re celebrating our survival and the generations after me,’ – the generation he’s created. We are affirming our existence.”

What do you think: affirmation or disrespect? -via Buzzfeed and Metafilter

This is a sweet ballet -meaning the dancers are fruits, cupcakes, bonbons, and Gummi bears! This stop-motion video was created by Maira Fridman. -via Things I Think Are Kinda Cool

You can no longer say you’ve never seen a tortoise dance. -via reddit

Champion skier and author Josh Sundquist {wiki} busts some rhymes about his handy crutches, his expensive prosthesis, and his great parking space. -via Unique Daily

Dancers Among Us is a project by photographer Jordan Matter. He placed professional dancers in motion in the middle of scenes of ordinary life in New York City in order to explore how people identify themselves.

I wondered about the impact of the recession on people’s identities. If a woman loses her job, does she lose a part of her identity as well? Who is the journalist, if he is no longer employed to write? Who is the chef without a kitchen? Is our identity formed by our passion, or our employment?

I believe in the strength of a life’s mission. If you dedicate yourself to a career that inspires and excites you, this commitment will be your foundation. As these dancers ride the subway, go to a baseball game or cross the street, they remain dancers; it is their lifeblood.

Gallery via Urlesque

Fight for Your Right to Electric Slide

(image credit: Improv Everywhere)

Many people are too embarrassed to admit they know how to do the electric slide, but Richard Silver isn’t one of them. Silver was a fixture of the New York disco scene, and he choreographed the electric slide in 1976. As the dance craze caught on, he was horrified to discover people doing just 18 of his 22-step routine. So he did what any self-righteous dance creator would do ad spent years threatening to sue anyone who bungled his moves. He even made YouTube take down videos of people dancing the slide at their weddings and bar mitzvahs. But Silver never actually sued anyone; he just made threats. In 2007, a civil rights organization called his bluff and sued him on behalf of a man whose dance party clips had been removed from the internet. The incident convinced Silver to stop hounding amateur dancers.

How Low Can You Go? The Soul-Crushing Origins of the Limbo

If you think the limbo was created for middle-aged couples in Hawaiian shirts, you couldn’t be more wrong. According to most sources, the dance came to America by way of Trinidad, where West Indian slaves invented it to simulate the descent into a slave ship. The lower a slave went into the ship’s hull, the harder it became to break free. Now try enjoying the dance on your next trip to Club Med. (image credit: Flickr user Endlisnis) 

Striking a Pose, When It Counts

Like breakdancing, voguing began as a competition between African Americans in New York. But in this case, rivals were underground fraternities of gay men in Harlem during the 1930s. Back then, voguing (which involves posing like a model) was simply called “performance” because of the judging it inspired. The dance was renamed “vogue” in the 1970s, after performers began striking poses found in glossy fashion magazines-namely Vogue. (image credit: Flickr user nayrb7)

Breakdancing: Settling it Old School

As innocent as it seems today, breakdancing emerged in the 1970s as a new way for gangs to fight each other. In black neighborhoods in the South Bronx, for instance, gang leaders would dance-off to songs like James Brown’s funky “Get on the Good Foot.” They’d even settles disputes through these proxy battles. The judging procedure was simple: whoever had the illest moves won.

The Courage to Trot Like a Turkey

In the early 1900s, men and women danced side by side, polka-style. So when kids started doing the Turkey Trot-a dance in which partners face each other-parent just didn’t understand. The Trot quickly became the forbidden dance of the ragtime era, and it was outlawed in some states. One unfortunate young lady in New Jersey actually served 50 days in jail just for dancing like a turkey. It should also be noted that the Turkey Trot is only one of many food- or animal-inspired dances that have been accused of corrupting America’s youth. There’s also the Bunny Hug, the Cakewalk, the Mashed Potato, the Duck Dance, and the Chickle Noodle Soup, just to name a few.

__________

The article above, written by Adam Rosen, appeared in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss’ extremely entertaining website and blog today!

Canine musical freestyle returns to the TV show Britain’s Got Talent! Tina and her dog Chandi put on quite a show. -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: Carolyn Scott and the amazing Rookie.

Remember Lin Yu Chun, the Taiwanese kid that out-Whitney Whitney Houston? Well, turns out that he can do more than sing … he can dance, too! My, he’s the whole package.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Jon Talisman!

The Carroll High School Chargers powder puff cheerleaders perform a halftime routine for the crowd in Fort Wayne, Indiana. -via YesButNoButYes

They’ll eat the humans after building an appetite dancing: Link [embedded YouTube]

YouTube link.

The video documents a seagull “dancing” to bring earthworms to the surface.  When humans do this, it’s called “worm-charming” or “worm-grunting.”  Wood turtles also use this technique, by repeatedly bumping their carapace against the ground.

Via Reddit.

These festive robots were built from RoboBuilder kits and synchronized to some classic holiday tunes. OK, just pretend that those little squeaks and servo motor noises are jingle bells. -via Geeks Are Sexy