At the end of a random-ish string of YouTube searching (I was looking for examples of the Lindy Hop danced by real dancers - not instructional videos*) I stumbled upon "choreographies" for Just Dance 4. This is a video game, apparently it's one of those motion-capture type of things, where you try to mimic the moves of an on-screen dance and score points for doing it well.
(*I so can't dance. I love watching things like the Lindy Hop but I know I could never do it - I'm insufficiently coordinated, too afraid of injuring myself, and also, way too heavy for anyone to lift me [though there's a bit in Swing Kids - just shown in passing - of a heavyset woman dancing with a smaller man, and SHE lifts HIM, which I think is kind of wonderful....and I'm pretty strong, actually, and using momentum and everything probably could, with the right training, flip a smaller partner over my back like she's shown doing])
Anyway, these things are kind of like karaoke but for dance. And they're also kind of like weird little cartoons-qua-music-videos. Some of them are kind of odd, with animal characters:
(And yeah, I wound up looking for older songs, ones I knew. This is They Might Be Giants but "Istanbul" has been around a lot longer as a song)
Some of them try at least to mimic the style of the song:
(And I kind of want the outfit of the girl on the left - the one with the longer hair)
I like this song a lot because of various reasons, and the choreography for it here just makes me laugh. (And there are some moves like the dance-exercise video I do! The zombie does disco rolls!)
(This is the one that made me laugh the hardest, I think. Partly for the "wait, what?" of "I Will Survive" being represented by a zombie who looks a little like Beetlejuice, but also for all the disco moves - I just *barely* remember seeing people disco-dancing on tv)
And the first one I watched: (It's weird, but I really love that old Louis Prima song. And yeah, yeah, I first ever heard the David Lee Roth version of it, but the Prima version is better)
No, I don't know why it's a hippo and someone who looks a little like Jessica Rabbit.
I can't really dance, and I tend to freeze up doing stuff like this in public (I'm very self-conscious and inhibited about stuff like this) but this video game does kind of look like big fun.
And then there's this. Because there HAS to be this:
3 comments:
I like watching Benjamin Schwimmer dance, and ahve known to go down the rabbit hole of youtube videos watching him. He does West Coast Swing, but I completely get it. Fun to watch!
I, like you, am very inhibited when it comes to dancing. I would love to be able to do it but about halfway through a song I get rhythm malfunction. :( I really liked these videos! I agree - I like the Louis Prima version. I didn't even know he did it. My first exposure to the song was the Village People. :)
For what it's worth, the Four Lads original of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" was on the charts the day I was born.
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