"Octo"pus, uh, "Dance"

This act takes a very strange Flash Gordon direction at :44.



Book the Octopus and his ladyfriend via VeniaminShows.com

1978 Week Continues: I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper

"Night and Day" was not an isolated incident.  Can you believe there's more of this?

Night and Day

They really don't make them like this any more.

Pas de Bunné

A Peeps version of the "Kingdom of the Shades" from La Bayadère:

source

La pasión!

Good heavens! My life is not too boring, but it is never, ever like this:



The information attached to this video on YouTube identifies the performers as Sylvia Shazadi, Carmelo Cuevas, and his horse Cartagines.

Good Riddance, Winter

Here on the East coast of the US, the spring equinox is at 12:14 a.m. on Tuesday, March 20.

Sorry, Southern hemisphere.

Art Film

This has everything:  dance!  costumes!  underwater! underwater puppetry!

The film is about 10 minutes long and deserves your full attention, so if you're in the middle of your day perhaps you'd like to come back when you're settled in after dinner.


SOLIPSIST from Andrew Huang on Vimeo.

Also: a behind-the-scenes video--


SOLIPSIST - Making Of from Andrew Huang on Vimeo.

Thank you Andrew Huang!

Cüte-sküdar'a Gider Iken: mülti-CÜTE-ral appeal

In the Turkish song "Kâtibim" (also called "Üsküdar'a Gider Iken," the opening lyric), a woman sings about a rainy day and her romance with a well-dressed clerk who looks handsome in his starched collar. 

Here's a movie version, complete with starched-collar clerk.



YouTube abounds with adorable kiddies acting out the parts of the lady and the clerk. Here's one:




Many other sets of lyrics, in many different languages, accompany this same melody.  There are several web pages discussing its ubiquity, and it was even the subject of a politically-tinged 2003 documentary film by Adela Peeva, titled "Whose is This Song?"

Read further:
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2009/10/whose-is-this-song.html
http://www.everybodys-song.net
http://reflections-of-a-nomad.blogspot.com/2010/05/when-going-to-uskudar-on-sacred-shabbat.html

While there aren't any Japanese lyrics for the song, these Japanese kidlets have cleverly reinterpreted the Turkish kids:  they are kawaii-sküdar'a gider iken!  (And look at how those two letters "i" practically make a "ü.")

Bad Girls from M.I.A.

On the one hand, I love the commentary on anti-woman driving laws.  I'm relieved that no more redheads are getting exploded.   I'm relieved that I don't have to revisit my conflicted feelings about Straight to Hell's inevitable downgrade from song to sample. But I am so confused. 

Oh, great.  The liberation of Kuwait has begun. 

What on Earth are you wearing?  Also—note Arab-attired men in background standing with arms crossed.

Ladies stand (and "dance") with arms crossed.

Back to the men. Same stance, new location.  What are they standing on?  Are these pipeline segments?

This would be a great place for some log-driver type fancy footwork.



Or guinea pigs!




Ladies!  Just one in the car... I think?  Or is that a car full of festively hijabed and niqabed ladies?  Or just very strange upholstery?

Spacekisser

This is wonderful!  The people who brought us Orientalized Doctor Who comedy have now parodied Turkish Star Trek.

Spacekisser!


Thank you dokuztaneprogramla!

Ostriches!

Winter would be better with more skiing ostriches.





The creator of this next video doesn't explain what this ostrich was doing in Iran. Escaping from something? Wikipedia confirms that ostrich is an African animal, although it does intriguingly allude to a now extinct Arabian Ostrich.



Equally, winter would be better with more dancing ostriches.

Remote Kontrol and Ruth St. Denis: Astonishing Bone Illusions

According to YouTube, 28 million people have already seen this video since it was posted in September, but in case you missed it...



I am blown away by what this guy can do with his ankles. Not only does Nonstop, the dancer in this video, move in amazing ways, the musicality of this performance is also great.

YouTube commenters seem primarily struck by the impression that Nonstop looks "boneless."

I wonder what they would have thought of modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis (whose rippling arms were insured by Lloyd's of London).

Source

In her autobiography, St. Denis reminisces about the "astonishment" of German audiences in 1907:

It is hard to realize now, when most dancers use an arm ripple, that at this period it did not exist as a part of the dance. I was the first dancer in the Western world to use my arms in such a fashion.

[...]

During the Wintergarten engagement I had an amusing visit after the performance. I knew that my arm ripple was the subject of much interest and speculation on the part of the public. In the Incense my arms were held out from the shoulder and were raised and lowered with a subtle rippling movement which began between the shoulder blades and seemed to extend through and beyond the fingers. In the Cobra the arms took on the undulating ripple of the snake’s body. After my Cobra dance we would frequently see women furtively practicing the sinuosities of the snake dance in the orchestra seats of at the back of their boxes. But I did not know that it was also the object of scientific curiosity.

[...]

A group of German professors had witnessed my dances and wished to call upon me in a body. [...] They were anatomists who had been intrigued by the famous arm ripple which lay completely outside of any previous experience of theirs. Would the highborn be so gracious as to repeat this phenomenon in the more intimate confines of her dressing room?

[...]

One of them took off his pince-nez and began to tap along my arm from shoulder to wrist, explaining to his confreres in excited terms what, in his estimation, was happening to the muscles. [...] I rippled with the right. I rippled with the left. I turned my back and, dropping my shawl chastely to my shoulder blades, allowed them to behold the wondrous beginnings of the movement.

They all talked at once, and they all exclaimed in various tones, “Das ist wunderbar! She has no bones. Yet it doesn’t stop. It goes on and on.”

via the New York Public Library.

If only those anatomists had had this handy tutorial:

Chickens are so amazingly talented!

As an instructor of bellydance, I am very impressed by these poultry. Talk about clean technique!





The choreographic possibilities are profound. (Chickens at 1:28)