The original idea was to find videos of cute kids dancing to music. Instead, it turned into a marathon session of weeding through embarrassing home videos, clumsily performed choreography at midwestern pageants, and strange endless close-ups into faces only the grandparents of the parent holding the camera could appreciate.
This bleak episode in my life has past, yet an unnerving shiver remains, remembering the time and bandwidth wasted unearthing videos of dancing children, entire parades of kids, stumbling through routines like wolverines in a ballet, with the majority of the songs concerning things and activities that would make a seasoned porn producer blush.
Enjoy these ornaments retrieved from a savage journey into the heart of darkness.
You thought James Brown could move? Check out his daughter setting fire to the dance floor, outshining everybody in the Soul Train audience.
Shawn Goldberg dancing to Michael Jackson
On November 10, 1984 an amazing event occurred on earth and thank god there was someone there to document the experience and save it for future generations of humanity to witness the jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring spectacle, a performance that deserves to be added to the images NASA dispatches into the deeper recesses of space for intergalactic discovery. It should be noted that I am not the boy in this video.
Let’s spotlight a more disturbing phenomenon known as “Booty Dew,” a song by The GS Boyz. The lyrics are not alarming, just another rap group shouting something about butt sweat; but it does induce quakes of dread to recognize the abominable truth, that populating the internet are so many videos of children, dancing to Booty Dew, while a grown-up adjusts the camera and directs the kids to stay in frame. This one was my favorite though because it appears they spent an afternoon planning and practicing the choreography. Give it a minute; it takes a little bit of time to really get grooving.
Why rear your child on the soothing sounds of Bach and Mozart (music known to raise intelligence) when Metallica and blast-beats cranked to 11 exposes hilarious spasms of confusion in the gyrations of children.
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.