Jack Black's energetic performance put a smile on my face.

 

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A post shared by Jack Black (@jackblack) on Mar 29, 2020 at 5:31pm PDT

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Boing Boing pal and best-selling urban fantasy author, Richard Kadrey, posted this video to Twitter and said to watch it. When Richard tells you to do something, you do it.

Watch this (with the sound on) and you will see why. Incredibly beautiful and awe-inspiring.

Incredible 😮 pic.twitter.com/PFDbVWPIvc

— Blade City (@BladeCityKnives) February 21, 2020

The dancer is a Taiwanese man who goes by the name of Titos Firedancer. You can see more of his sword dancing videos on his Facebook and Instagram pages.

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It's almost as if the mirrors aren't even real!

The act appeared on Nippon TV's Masquerade entertainment contest.

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I'm glad he came prepared with a hand towel to ensure a good grip on the railing.

I can't help but imagine him in a dance-off with the footloose and fancy-free fellow made famous by this classic clip:

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A post shared by Total Frat Move (@totalfratmove) on Jul 18, 2018 at 2:17pm PDT

Professional choreographers Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Grant deconstruct the final dance in Dirty Dancing. Original below. Nobody puts Patrick Swayze in the corner.

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A post shared by Kylie Shea (@kyliesheaxo) on Oct 3, 2019 at 9:12am PDT

Professional dancer and actress Kylie Shea performed in front of a thermographic camera that forms an image from infrared radiation. From Instagram:

We filmed this late one night on a tennis court in the freezing cold to watch and study how my body heats up when I dance. My core was the first to fire up and the back of my legs (the place my body prefers to store fat) remained ice cold for the entire 45 minutes of improv. Though this was a few years ago, I recently rediscovered the footage and realized I had never shared it here on IG! This study fascinated me and I look forward to exploring it further with different styles of movement! Cheers to growing, learning, and dancing, always. ???? Motorcycle “As the Rush Comes” (Gabriel & Dresden Chillout Mix)

Oh, this is too good. After Bowie died in 2016, YouTuber George Dillon made this video of Laurel and Hardy dancing to "The Jean Genie" to honor the late rockstar. It really works.

He also did a similar treatment for "Rebel Rebel":

Joy!

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Directed by Topper Carew, "Breakin 'n' Enterin'" (1983) documented the Los Angeles B-boy scene emerging at Venice Beach and MacArthur Park's Radio-Tron nightclub. Keep your eyes peeled for a young Ice-T, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, and Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones who all appeared the following year in Breakin'. The dancing in this documentary is much better than in the feature film though -- more complex, raw, and aggressive.

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BB pal Lissa Soep of YR Media (formerly Youth Radio) writes:

Our Interactive team delved into Spotify's algorithm to discover how songs on the platform are scored for their "danceability." We were intrigued by this use of Artificial Intelligence to quantify something as personal and cultural as what makes us want to move our bodies. So we built a tool that invites users to rate a curated playlist for each song’s “danceability” and compare that rating against the one Spotify produced algorithmically. Our writer Deborah Raji uses the project to raise fascinating questions about what it means for AI to be making its way into so many corners of our lives.

"Can You Teach AI to Dance?" (YR Media)

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On the set of The Good Place, Ted Danson (or is that "Ted Dancing"?) got a lesson from his co-stars on how to floss. Not "floss" as in dental care, but as in the dance craze that's sweeping the nation™.

Ted Danson learning to floss is the only video I’m interested in watching for the rest of the year. pic.twitter.com/SKTMKZKvM3

— Justin Kirkland (@justinkirkland4) November 16, 2018

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Al Jourgensen may prefer to forget that he once cultivated an English accent and created this underground club hit, but on this day, we happily remember Ministry's "(Everyday Is) Halloween" from 1984. Above, a fan video cut up from horror films.

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In 1922, the devil appeared at several teen dances in Hutchinson, Minnessota. Apparently he'd manifest "in the middle of the dance floor with fire streaming from eyes, mouth and tail" and attempt to break up the sinful festivities. A reward of $5,000 was offered to anyone who would shoot the devil next time he turned up. At the next party, a boy, 14, took his best shot and hit Lucifer right in the abdomen. Turned out that the devil was a local Methodist minister.

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The principal of Xinshahui kindergarten in Shenzhen, China was fired after bringing pole dancers to perform for the students during back-to-school celebrations. From CNN:

"The district education bureau believes performing pole dancing for kindergarten children is not appropriate," the statement (from the local education board) said, adding the school had been asked to apologize to students and parents.

Principal Lai (Rong) told state tabloid Global Times that while "a few parents" had requested a refund (for tuition), others wanted to "learn a new type of dance."

She said she arranged the dance because of the dancer's "excellent skills."

Who would think this is a good idea? We're trying to pull the kids out of the school and get our tuition back. They wouldn't give us the number of the company that owns the school, but looking into that. pic.twitter.com/vEdIhuq774

— Michael Standaert (@mstandaert) September 3, 2018

Dance battles have come a long way from a bunch of kids breaking on a piece of cardboard. Watch as The Lab shows how it's done these days, replete with gymnastics, tight choreography, and the slick production values of a major network show. Read the rest

For Dancing in Movies, Casper Langbak took dancing scenes from over 300 movies and set them to some great retro hits.

YouTube gave it an instablock because of the music used, but he does have a channel over there with cool stuff like this tribute to cinematic evil:

• Dancing in Movies (Vimeo / CLS Videos) Read the rest

Someone made this 7-minute video that consists of snippets of dances scenes from almost 300 movies. The full list is here. Almost every one is joyful. The only exceptions I noticed were Clockwork Orange and Black Swan.

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YouTuber Ryan Higa admits that he can't dance. When one of his viewers asked if he could dance without moving, he put together this amazing stop-motion video with his friends.

This is how it was made:

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