The title is not misleading. “Dancing” shows a guy dancing: a big, doughy-looking fellow in shorts and hiking boots performing an arm-swinging, knee-pumping step that could charitably be called goofy. It’s the kind of semi-ironic dance that boys do by themselves at junior high mixers when they’re too embarrassed to partner with actual girls.
The dancer is Matt Harding, the 31-year-old creator of the video, and with some New Agey-sounding music playing in the background, he turns up, grinning and bouncing, in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu and the Nellis Airspace in Nevada, where he performs the dance in zero gravity…
However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus…
Matt isn’t inclined to leap into the Hollywood/media/showbiz hustle of producing “Dancing 2″. Let this live as a video unto itself.
Folks who come up with talented ideas like this generally have more than one gem inside their noggin.
A friend sent this to me a week ago. It’s so simple yet brilliant. Absolutely beautiful. 🙂
If stridegum dot com underwrote this guy’s itinerary, I need to get ahold of them.
How come you find such stuff and I keep missing it?
Great vid!
I saw his first one. Its cool. Watching these is like watching films of babies laughing. Just makes you feel good. 🙂
“Matt isn’t inclined to leap into the Hollywood/media/showbiz hustle of producing “Dancing 2″”
except this is at least the 4th version of “Dancing” that he has done since 2006 http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=mattharding2718&p=r
Figured a Blue Meanie would land sooner or later. From reading the article, it appears to me – not having seen any predecessors – that each has been a chronological extension of previous.
Not sequels.
this man has way too much free time and way too much money to waste…. damn all id like to do is make enough to live on…. not waste on such nonsense….
stride gum undwrote this??? i’d stay away from this product……
I would call myself a heartless bastard for thinking this movie is gimmicky and dumb, except that my parents are still very much married to each other.
We’ve witnessed the birth of a new sub-culture. The “viral jigger” videographer.
Dancing in the “Vomit Comet” is extremely cool!
Cool. How long until Apple uses the idea for an iPod commercial?
Yeah, cute idea. But it gets tired after the first 2 hours. I vote him off the show.
This guy travels to some of the weirdest places in the world and what do we learn or get from it? Feel good crap. Sorry. I’m out.
OK cynics–I’m mostly a cynic myself, but I loved the latest video, which a friend on LiveJournal found. I’m told the older ones are also well worth seeing.
Matt may be a dorky dancer (as am I), but he is now sponsored by a chewing gum company of all things (the company approached him just before he went off to make the latest video), and the company plans to continue supporting his travels and videos.
He is kinda cute, even though he dances a bit goofy. I just love all those exotic places, just not to sure about that plane part.
John…… someone must have stepped on your crank today.It made me happy.Buy lots of Stride gum.
The Scrooge gene is alive and well in these comments.
Hey Bruce, put some KY on your lips and loosen up tightass. At least John watched it for 2 hours before he went sour.
This guy sucks jet fuel so he can dance. Too much carbon for dancing and having fun. We watch but don’t participate on the local level. Take a bike ride or a short drive to a park and dance around like Devo and everyone will hopefully join in.
Ah, maybe I’ll stare into the fridge looking for some.
I MISS HOME!!!
But seeing all these brothers and sisters in humanity makes me feel humble and happy !
The negative comments about Harding’s video remind me of Dean Wormer’s snarling line in the movie Animal House: “No more fun of any kind!”
What a lonely, miserable world those kind of people want to live in.
Cool and different, oh, and a bit refreshing also to see so many unpaid smiles dancing to a nice, soft tune. I at least could use something like this every once in a while to get my mind off of all the stress from work, etc.
21- Definitely agree, and I have to wonder how much of this bitterness is not directly linked to jealousy they must possess for this guy to get to travel the world and do this for a living.
His traveling the world, showing that people everywhere are essentially the same, all wanting to laugh, dance, have a good time is priceless. The genuine smiles on everyone’s faces tell the tale all to well: more dancing = more happiness.
Now, if these bitter bastards in this thread could see that, then maybe others could, too.
John,
I must respectfully disagree. WIth things the way they are today, true international open-arm feel-good crap is in limited supply, and worth every effort. It may be dumb, but a video of multiple races, cultures, and nations dancing together in peace is a ray of hope in the smog of fear and hate we have to live in. Call me a hopeless idealist.
The question is… Where the hell is Matt’s girlfriend?
It’s not your money, it never was your money, it’s never going to be your money. What business of yours if some corporation wants to spend a bunch of their money on a viral ad?
John is mean….we all know that. But yeah, sickeningly sweet in my opinion. Get a job Matt.
Saw him on the TODAY SHOW, this morning – doing his dance at the Radio City Plaza.
I smiled, I laughed.