Epic Dubstep Dude is Epic

[video link to the latest from WHZGUD2, dancing to a track remixed by Butch Clancy.] via @pourmecoffee.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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woodly

Das Epic.
hobomike

Epic Lagging
KBert

oh, Yes I Jelly, oh Yes.
Peter James

Whenever I see this kind of dancing to DubStep, it always reminds me of the Uniqlo Mixplay event:

http://www.uniqlo.com/jp/corp/eng/projects/mixplay/

(or on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSdhDyPhyiU )

Always impressed by people that can move like that :)
guynoire

Amazing. At 4:13, that doesn’t look physically possible!
Bottle Imp

Most of the music leaves me cold, but damn, the dancing is undeniably awesome.
bklynchris

This is now my new #1 poplock video followed by

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Dg3QMfWgQ
- http://rosefox.livejournal.com/ Rose Fox
  
  Japan never disappoints.
http://twitter.com/TheAngryUnicorn Johnny

Looks awesome but this video is totally in front of a green screen and edited. That or he’s a vampire who can somehow go out in the daylight because there’s no reflection.
- Guest
  
  He casts a reflectiony sort of thing on the bench. That window is not perpendicular to the camera.
  
  I fear he is a living, breathing glitch in the matrix.
- guynoire
  
  Johnny, there is a persistent shadow throughout the whole video. The problem (or the good thing) is that he isn’t under direct light so there isn’t a strongly noticeable shadow.
- Snig
  
  If you follow the links for his group, REMOTEKONTROL, you can see other performances of him and his group. I don’t think he’s shopped.
- Ben_R_R
  
  There is something of an optical illusion going on here. The window is actually quite a ways back from the dancer. With the camera angle he would have to be right next to the window for there to be a reflection.
  - Palomino
    
    Please post your film degree and credentials, your portfolio will do too.
    
    Stupid ass people watching way too much C.S.I! Why are you picking this apart like it’s a crime scene?
    - invictus
      
      You’ve rather missed the point and barked up the wrong tree, haven’t you?
    - Guest
      
      chastising them does not work. You have to show their foolishness, not trump it.
- scifijazznik
  
  You can’t see a shadow because there’s half an inch of Crisco on every surface. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way this dude could move like that.
- public bizmail
  
  There ARE reflections. Look on the park bench at 2:48 and 4:00.
  
  There should NOT be reflections of the dancer in the glass door because the angle is wrong.
  
  Neither park bench nor the trash can have shadows the entire clip is shot with indirect lighting. Given the strong reflections of traffic in the glass door, I suspect this is a north-facing alcove.
  
  There may be a bit of editing with simple cuts or speed-up/slow down, but nothing you couldn’t do with an Amiga 2000.
  
  No need for a green screen — just an epic dancer.
InsertFingerHere

I can’t even control my bladder sometimes, this guy’s The Boss of his body, cool.
Patrick Delaney

he’s a wizard, obv.
zebbart

All these years, following boingboing, and I wondered why. And all those searches of youtube hiphop dance videos, and I wondered why. This alone would justify it all. Thank you Xeni, this is so awesome it literally brought tears of joy to me. I’m tempted to say goodbye to the internet and leave well enough alone, but I’ll quit being silly and keep being silly.
herrnichte

Funny pattern of threads which permit commenting and those that don’t since the latest dramatic change. Is that a “feature” or a bug? (that is, it would’ve been nice to be able to comment on the FCC and BART mobile shutdown …but no comment button)
- Guest
  
  click on the title
  - herrnichte
    
    oh weird… (why would that…?) well ok… thank you!
- https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM
  
  Funny pattern of threads which permit commenting and those that don’t since the latest dramatic change. Is that a “feature” or a bug?
  
  I wondered that as well.
Snig

If he does or wanted to do tai chi, he’d be amazing at it.
- ernunnos
  
  I’ll bet he has. He gets in a pretty decent snake-creeps-down @ 4:15.
geekcalif

Xeni—-At last– a post that ISN’T about police brutality, false arrests and brutal police regimes.
- Palomino
  
  I don’t know, some comments make it seem like rolls of yellow tape should be strung up around this guy. Sad cynics.
http://egypt.urnash.com Egypt Urnash

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

When he started going backwards my eyes bugged out. And then he did things that made that look like small potatoes. Holy FUCK.
robuluz

I fucking love this. I love the way technology and video clip fashion inform his movement, the contrast between what gets churned out for MTV versus the capability of the human body is mesmerising. Editing suite cliche as high art.

I hope this guy gets more than his 15 minutes. That is one great vision, executed brain meltingly well.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

This dude is awesome. I suck at dancing, but I dance anyway at times. I always said that if the muses came to bless me with total mastery of some form of dance, I would choose the robot. So good a robot that I could take over Numbers and NRG in the early 90′s.

Add my individual style to the blessings of the Muses and I’d be this guy. But the Muses never blessed me, so I am humbly in awe of this guy.
Doug Nelson

Wow, first he has that great radio voice and now this. I don’t understand why he’s homeless.
franko

i really was well on the road to hating dubstep outright before seeing this. his dancing actually makes me appreciate it to a much larger degree than i did 8 minutes ago.
- petsounds
  
  well, he’s doing old school pop and lock moves and applying it to dubstep. without the dancing, it’s just bad techno.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    You wouldn’t say that if he were a Viking.
Mister44

Something must be screwed up with my internet connection. Like half of that video was in slo-mo.
Greg Wilson

When a robot can do this its all over for us. ……..unless they can’t come up with their own dance moves only copy them.
Then it will be all over for me because I can not dance.
Guest

There’s some wicked little part of me that wants to see him do the same routine, while he wears nothing but his shoes, so I can watch all his muscles move.
- Palomino
  
  Actually, not wicked at all, cool idea actually. But I think he relies on the lines, like the one’s on his shirt? Maybe if he was naked and painted, like a leopard or tiger, or alien….that would be cool. I’m totally digging your idea.
  
  http://youtu.be/jTuyXfEbtf4 2:14 is the best I could come up with for you.
  - Guest
    
    It’s as though they’ve reinvented ballet. No formal training, so no rules about what they can and can’t do. So my eyes wants to strip the dancers down to shoes and a dance belt to make the routines more visually fascinating and compelling, even while my mind continues to say, ‘that’s not possible…but clearly, it is’.
    
    He could be choreographing a show on Broadway.
    - Guest
      
      Someone introduce him to Jacobs Pillow. Not that I know dance, but I know he’d shake it up.
Chrs

Just watching him go back to normal movement for a little bit at 3:30 messes with my brain. That brief breather brings it home just how ridiculous what he’s doing is.
noah django

Dope. I can pop-lock well enough for shits and giggles, but this cat is beyond the pale. I’ve seen some poppin’ battles. No way this cat ever lost.
3William56

In other news, a bloke was beaten and maced by cops for gross violation of the laws of gravity and inertia.

(BTW: for the folks who think he’s a vampire or it’s ‘shopped: I believe the “window” is a grille as it’s an old building. Nothing is reflecting in it, and you can clearly see the cars passing in the background.)
- CH
  
  Hmm, yeah, you might be right. I was going to say that you can clearly see the distortions in the relections, but then again… the color of the arch is different on the other side (red vs yellow) and there seems to be some kind of buzzer on the other side. Dunno… plexiglass?
  
  Either way, he is not in any point of the video at an angle where he would reflect, either way. And the shadows on the ground and the bench sure don’t look shopped to me (or then we can add legen… dary to whomever is doing the shopping).
  - Palomino
    
    UUUUUM, please tell us when you’ve ever seen a non-distorted reflection walking down a sidewalk lined with display windows.
    
    Noting in the video is distorted, only your perceptions. I hate to inform you, but the video really doesn’t exist, neither does YouTube or BoingBoing, we’re all in your imagination.
    
    Take another hit.
- Palomino
  
  It is not an old building, how do you know that? We have those buildings everywhere in Arizona, those are not individual stones and if they are, they are sawed in half so one side has a flat edge. This is a public building, probably on a Sunday or holiday. And that bench screams Smoking Area.
  
  I’m tired of this “Burn The Witch” mentality.
http://rosefox.livejournal.com/ Rose Fox

I cannot get over how much this looks like belly-dance moves!
CH

Amazing! Simply amazing! Epic doesn’t come close… I would call it legen… dary!!!!! Just the arm movement in itself was out of this world! (I felt like going over to the animator and telling him the animations are all effed up.)

Although… um… I just couldn’t stop thinking through the video how adding a pole dancing part would fit just perfectly. Damn you Boingboing and your interesting posts!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000829065733 Jon Sowden

+1

and another 1. Then a whole bunch more. In binary.

My floppy uncoordinated white frame is so embarrassing sometimes.
B A

This guy is the Zen master of popping.
Dance. It’s the wiggle of life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkbweCV1_GY
penguinchris

Saw this earlier via twitter, and I think it’s great.

I didn’t realize this is what dubstep is… or is it? Is this literally dubstep, or is dubstep just referring to the music?

I’ve heard dubstep music before and thought it was shit… this in particular wasn’t shit, exactly, but I could never listen to it outside of the video – you’re so transfixed by the dancing that you tend to not notice the music (except when it gets really harsh, which works really well with his staccato moves in those parts). And I don’t get how this is a remix of that song… basically they play a couple bars of the song every once in a while, and then the rest of the time has 100% nothing to do with it.
- thezarray
  
  Dub-tip: stop listening to things on laptop speakers, for they are manufactured by the Joyless Ones. Use a subwoofer, and enjoy and feel life-anew.
http://www.videoconverterfactory.com/resource.html HughDiego

Interesting video~
willyboy

Word to your mother.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FKHDCIS27XPE6ZFY6MWMN5UYRQ grima

Robots becoming increasingly human while humans try to be increasingly robotic
A.

Robot breaks epic wind.
http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo

O_O

Holy crap!

Dude’s technique is so mad it’s almost implausible on video.

You kinda wanna see a big clock with a second hand in the background or something…

This guy impresses me more than Robert Muraine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDekf0nLEQ
- Palomino
  
  There is a clock, watch the cars zipping by in the window’s reflection.
- bklynchris
  
  OMG dude! Thank you so much! I was looking for this guy to add to my comment with Polysics popping(mos def should check out if haven’t) but couldn’t ‘memba his name. I just searched undere white boy popping and got repeated hits to that white boy doing a very unimpressive donk-ka-donk. It was good but it was not art.
Evil Paul

Choreography by GMod
Palomino

This is illegal in China, he’s displaying Some Excellent Falun Gong.

And sad too that so many viewers see what they want to see, a cheat.

JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DO IT OR CONCEIVE HOW IT’S DONE, DOESN’T MEAN IT’S MAGIC! I thought one of the web’s purposes was to make things less mysterious, it’s obviously invented more cynics.

Pick your noses instead of picking this apart, you can’t eat the magic but you can eat the crusty bits harvested from your nose….”Oh my God, how did these yummy golden snacks magically appear in my nose…want some?”
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  And sad too that so many viewers see what they want to see, a cheat.
  
  I’m not one of those guys; I was hoping my tone would convey the comment as intended: a high compliment.
MelSkunk

I have to say, I plan on learning to pop and lock now. I’ve just watched too many awesome videos not to want to try it.
Jerry Sneed

It does not have to be on green screen for this to be augmented. You don’t have to look for reflections in glass. I’m an editor, and to me this looks like a very good dancer doing a routine and then some speed up/slow down has been done. An indication of this is at 4:37 to 4:38 as he’s sliding down to sit on the bench. You have to look very carefully, but I see what is called a bad match frame edit as it goes from normal speed to slo-mo. This looks like the tiniest of jumps of his body to screen left. It is very tiny. Watch it several times and you should see what I’m talking about. This is a normal thing that happens when abruptly changing the speed of a clip.
- bklynchris
  
  Look at the other two links for popping and you will see that this is a very do-able way of popping, very difficult, but doable. Everyone that says that it isn’t quite obviously has never seen popping live.
UncaScrooge

Dancing is impossible. Chalk up another victory for gravity.
http://twitter.com/zdislaw Tim Arnold

Very cool. Hey, you wanna know who else is really cool? David Elsewhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVHGnbOXVps (the kid in red starting at :45). The way the crowd just completely loses it at :55 is a wonderful thing to hear. And after that, you’ll probably want more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgeJtyqyi4s
Brainspore

Yeah, well, I bet I’d be a good dancer too if I had magical shoes that granted surreal powers over space and time.
http://twitter.com/magicpeacelove PeaceLove

The dancer is NonStop from RemoteKontrol crew. More of his amazing amazingness here: http://www.youtube.com/user/WHZGUD
MooseDesign

That is unbelievable… the illusion is so complete at times it looked like his shirt material was actually moving more slowly. Serious talent.
lorq

What fantastic talent. The whole thing is wonderful, but that move at 4:13 just kills me.
John_Wilmot

I wondered! Everything seemed a bit sped up to me. I’ll be honest, unless I am at a performance hall, I often tend to space out when watching a dancer. I happened to be spacing out in the general direction of the window, and all of the cars seem to be moving particularly fast. There are plenty, but in particular I would point to the white car at :46, and another (yellow school bus? Is that a yellow school bus?) at 2:07. A lot of skill went into this, regardless, but the freakishly fast-moving vehicles were captivating.
confu

I really like ‘pumped up kicks’, but this vid reminds me that my life was lacking some serious bass.
Watch the other clips of this guy and his crew. Never saw sth like this … SloMo B-Boying :) Outstanding.
Just turned on bassdrive radio. I knew there was sth missing.
Snig

He would be great to have to have at a collider experiment, as he could convince the gullible that they’d broken Time and now it was skipping a beat.