Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Dance Heroes

I've never done one of those "look at what weird internet searches are bringing people to my site" kind of posts, but this time I must, in order to help some searchers and point them in the right direction.

I'm getting frequent and repeated searches for the Superman Dance, the Batman Dance, and the Aquaman Dance (searchers: follow those links) from what I suppose I must call the "Crank Dat" dance series, courtesy of "Soulja Boy", a rap artist of the crunk or snap variety. My site comes up on the search because of my previous discussion about whether particular superheroes can dance.

I find this all oh so ironic on a variety of levels.

The simplest irony is that people are looking on my site to learn how to do the dance, rather than just going to Youtube, where the dang things are all over the places. But there's more...

Part of my family operates dance studios, and over the years I have heard the death of patterned popular announced again and again. Pop dancing died with 1950s doo-wop; and with the Death of Disco; and with the false belief that breakdancing stopped in the 1980s. Yet, again and again, the people invent their own patterned dances to popular music (a fact undiminished by ones aesthetic evaluation of either the dance or the music).

Similar, as a comic book fan, I've heard repeatedly the cultural obituary of the superhero genre and specifically of the great American superheroes, which, you know, just aren't "cool enough" for the next generation.

Well, tell that to all the people dancing the Batman dance, the Superman dance, and the Aquaman dance.

4 comments:

  1. The Garlings sound like a fascinating clan. Maritime Amish dance instructors?

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  2. I give it another couple of months before the "crank dat" dances slip off into the land of obscurity/admitted stupidty.

    Well, all of them except Crank Dat Forest Gump, that is...

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  3. "The Garlings sound like a fascinating clan."

    That's what happens when different branches leave the farm at different times!

    "Maritime Amish dance instructors?"

    Brethren, sir! Not Amish. They are Coke; Mennonites are Diet Coke; we are Coke Zero.

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  4. Wow, DC couldn't by this kind of publicity. That's awesome.

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