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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
This girl is nine years old, and she has some great moves! Watch her show off her shuffling skills at NeatoBambino. 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
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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
Comments Off 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!
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.
This group of kids performing urban dance on a street corner in the rain gives ballet a modern twist.
A team of psychologists showed video footage of male dancers to 37 young women who rated them, and used the results to pinpoint what makes a man a good dancer or a bad dancer.
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
That’s all they really want
Some fun
When the working day is done
Robots – they want to have fun
Oh robots just want to have fun
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]
Watch Russian military tanks maneuvering as if they were dancing, as they perform in a precision drill called The Invincible and the Legendary.
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
Comments Off 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.
Some dances that we learned as kids were not at all new, or not nearly as new as we thought they were! Here are the origins of five dances you might have tried at one time or another.
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.
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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
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