Holy Jesus, look at what this ballerina can do!
I have rarely in my life seen something as physically impressive as this performance of Swan Lake:
It’s not just what she does, it’s how rock-still she is while doing it. Just, wow. (via ★interesting)
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kottke.org posts about dance
Girl Walk // All Day online for free
Thanks to Gothamist, you can watch the entirety of Jacob Krupnick’s Girl Walk // All Day online. GWAD is a feature-length music video set to Girl Talk’s All Day.
Long-toed cowboy boots
Last year, Vice travelled to Matehuala, Mexico in search of dance crews who wear extremely pointy cowboy boots called botas vaqueras exóticas.
In Matehuala, guarachero has become an unlikely style of music where a bunch of people who in theory should not get along come together and get along. It’s also the music preferred by the men and boys in the long and pointed boots.
Participants in these dance contests spend the days and weeks prior choreographing intricate footwork routines and fabricating their own outfits with cheap paint and fabric. The grand prize, beyond the enthusiastic crowd’s affection, is either a bottle of whiskey or a few bucks.
(via mlkshk)
Shufflin’ grandpa
One of my favorite things on the internet is footage of old styles of dancing set to contemporary music. Like this:
See also Daft Punk Charleston and Russian dancing (w/ Run DMC). (via ★dunstan)
Girl Walk // All Day NYC premiere
Girl Walk // All Day is a feature-length dance music video set in NYC…the soundtrack is Girl Talk’s All Day. Kickstarter is hosting a premiere for the film (+ dance party) on December 8 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple…and it’s free (you just need to RSVP). Here’s the trailer:
Sword dancing
Dancing skills + sword fighting skills + old lady sitting motionless in a chair skills + huge boom box skills + dog almost gets beheaded skills + it gets magical around 52 seconds =
(via @thanland)
100 years of East London fashion
A couple dances their way through 100 years of fashion, from 1911 to 2011.
Les Twins
I’ve seen other more formal on-stage performances by these amazing French twin dancers, but I like this one the best…even fooling around, their precision is impressive.
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Campbell?
Ladies and gentlemen, a friendly reminder: Pete Campbell’s happy dance.
Makes you 9 foot tall when you’re 4 foot 5
The sound, style, and look of Janelle Monae’s video for “Tightrope” references a lot of classic pop/art culture: OutKast and Metropolis, certainly, James Brown and Michael Jackson, but also classic R&B performers like Jackie Wilson and avant-garde film like Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon.
It also reminded me, faintly but insistently, of this classic video of Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers, from the movie Stormy Weather. (What is it with economic depression => dancing in tuxedos?)
I still think this is the easily most amazing display of deliberate human physicality in dance I’ve ever seen. Maybe anywhere. (Hit Twitter at @kottke or @tcarmody if you think you’ve got a better candidate.)
Turf dancing in the rain
Turf dancing is similar to krumping and poppin’ & lockin’ in that they’re all basically break dancing 2.0. This is a particularly fine exhibition of the form:
Every time I see someone glide around, from Michael Jackson’s 1983 Motown Moonwalk on up to David Elsewhere, I think no one can get any better at skimming around on their feet like they’re weightless. Then four kids dancing on a rainy street corner up the ante and once more shift what Stuart Kauffman calls the adjacent possible. (via snarkmarket)
Dancers among us
Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among Us series features dancers from the Paul Taylor and Martha Graham Dance Companies doing everyday out-and-about things in NYC while dancing. (via pdn)
19th century movie in color
Each frame of this 19th century film by the Lumière brothers was hand-colored to create an early color moving picture. The color-shifting effect of the dress looks quite modern.
The dancing was inspired by Loie Fuller, a modern dance pioneer.
Dance, Pete Campbell, dance!
I could watch Pete Campbell dance all the day long. Pitch perfect acting by Vincent Kartheiser. (via this recording)
Paris is Burning
Smashing Telly found the entirety of a documentary called Paris is Burning on YouTube.
This is a documentary about vogueing, and the extremely refined and detailed aesthetic sensibilities it reflects, shot in New York City around Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Harlem in the mid- to late-80s. The city has changed in dramatic ways since then, to say the least. The characters of the film are complete outsiders with, at the same time, a deep understanding of the world they are outside of.
Check out a recent example of vogue dancing.
Eternal Moonwalk
This is pretty awesome: a bunch of videos strung together to make it seem like one long moonwalk. In tribute to Michael Jackson, of course. What’s amazing is that for the 4-5 minutes I watched, there was not a single decent moonwalk…just people shuffling backwards. (via vsl)
Update: Matt Zoller Seitz analyzes Eternal Moonwalk and finds much to love about it.
Eternal Moonwalk is also an incidental tutorial in the basic properties of cinema. It returns motion pictures to their origin point, when the medium’s core appeal was the chance to watch strangers performing, their bodies moving from Point A to Point B, their familiar or amusing actions serving as an emotional connection point, a reminder that we’re members of the same species inhabiting the same small world.
Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates
Video clip from It’s Always Fair Weather of Gene Kelly dancing with roller skates on.
The good stuff starts around 2:00. As David says, “putting Kelly on roller skates is like adding polish to wax”.
Old School Breakdancing
Soviet Army dance ensemble + Run DMC = the invention of breakdancing in the mid-1900s.
Here’s the same thing mixed with Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice. Reminds me of the previously featured but still awesome video of Al Minns and Leon James doing the Charleston to Daft Punk. Here are two more videos that track the origins and breakdancing and hip-hop dancing in a slightly more formal manner: one, two.
John McCain vs Barack Obama dance-off
I don’t know if this has been linked around everywhere or not, but this surprisingly realistic video of a dance-off between Barack Obama and John McCain tickled every last bone in my body. I watched it at least four times.
Intimidating cultural appropriation
The high school football team in Euless, TX (population 52,900) starts their games by performing the haka, a chanting dance used to intimidating effect by New Zealand’s All Blacks rugby team. What’s odd/interesting about this is that the Maori chant was appropriated by the team’s contingent of Tongan players — whose parents moved to the town to work at DFW airport — and has led to a greater sense of acceptance of the Tongans into the larger community. How’s that for multiculturalism?
Swing dancing in Washington Square Park
Shot this video of some swing dancing in Washington Square Park while out and about the other day.
You know, typical New York stroll in the park.
This video makes me irrationally happy…I
This video makes me irrationally happy…I watched it four times in a row just now.
It was the freshest move I’ve ever seen, like he was floating on air.
And yeah, that’s Kanye West’s Vimeo account. His blog is entertaining as well; a recent favorite post is YOU CAN’T MAKE ME STOP POSTING YAGHTS!!!
Update: Vimeo erased the video because it was not original content so I pointed to one on YouTube. They also erased all but one video on Kanye’s account…I guess they were all videos by other people.
Legendary mime Marcel Marceau died Saturday at
Legendary mime Marcel Marceau died Saturday at age 84.
Michael Jackson borrowed his famous “moonwalk” from a Marceau sketch, “Walking Against the Wind.”
I tried to find video of that sketch but came up empty.
Update: Here’s some video of Marceau teaching wind walking to a class…and miming with Michael Jackson. (thx, andy & mike)
Update: Here’s a better video of Marceau doing his wind walk, from a Mel Brooks movie no less. (thx, manuel)
Denis Darzacq’s photos of dancers, caught in mid-flight. (thx, david)
Denis Darzacq’s photos of dancers, caught in mid-flight. (thx, david)
Video of some fellows doing The Charleston
Video of some fellows doing The Charleston to Around the World by Daft Punk. (via buzzfeed)
Update: The two fellows are Al Minns and Leon James…here’s the original video. In the final 30 seconds or so of the video, they almost look like they’re poppin’ and lockin’. (thx, paul)
Doin’ the robot has never looked so
Doin’ the robot has never looked so good in this video for Uniqlo. (via wider angle)
Patented Michael Jackson moves
You know that patented move that Michael Jackson does in the Smooth Criminal video where he leans and looks like he’s going to tip over but then he doesn’t? Turns out Jackson actually did patent that method back in 1993. The drawings are pretty funny.
BIRD FLU DANCE WATCH! A bird flu “
BIRD FLU DANCE WATCH! A bird flu “riddim” from January 2006 from a student in South Africa (originally from Botswana). Not sure how this ties into either version of the flu dance (a third strain?).
Bird flu dance
New crazy bird flu dance is all the rage in the Ivory Coast. “If we kill all our chickens and poultry, our cousins in the village will become poor. So I created the bird flu dance to put joy back into our hearts.” Article comes with a complimentary Funky Chicken joke…but not with a “this dance is sick, yo” joke.
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