Dance the Night Away (the best and worst dancing in music videos)
 

Looking for videos which contains the best and worst dance performances in a music video.



I'll start with this particular version of Wuthering Heights. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. To start off within the first few seconds you hear chimes which is the motif invariably used to indicate something magical will happen and that hold true with this song and video. Kate's vocals are not only exceptional, her choreography is off the charts. Her dance style is part ballet, part avant-garde, with a sprinkling of French pantomime, and on top of that she lip-syncs during her incredible dance performance. Such multi-tasking I find mind boggling. The song ends with a bit of "Magic" too with a warm and fuzzy guitar solo outro provided by Ian Bairnson. Besides being the studio musician on Kate's album he played also played in Pilot and The Alan Parsons Project.

Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights




As you participate in this thread, please pace yourselves, don't throw up a bunch of videos all at once. And also don't throw up a video without commenting on it. There are plenty of thread that you can throw up a video and leave no comment. Hopefully this won't turn into one of those. btw I have more than one video to post. I just want to hear different opinions before I move onto the next.

I'll just cut to the chase and put up one of the best ever...



Not sure what to say about it, since it speaks for itself. Here's Michael in all his theatrical coolness, the legend who makes dancing look as easy as pouring water. Right at the 4:04 mark--gets me every time. He's so ****ing cool!

Maylee Todd - Hieroglyphics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddpczq4MPE0

Hands down my favourite music video of all time. Every time I take a long bus drive up to visit my parents, I watch this video and a few other faves of mine. EVERY TIME.

There's lots of improvised street dancing and such in the video. What I love about the dancing in this video is exactly how simple it is. Just so many great little moments that I know by heart now.

There's more dancing happening in the second half, btw.

This was a good use of moving walls/furniture:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE

All done in one take too. Jay Kay's no Fred Astaire, but he's got some moves.

Worst:



Best:

Hey, it's these kind of dance move that earned him a place in posterity with his own song "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5.

I am kinda use to way Mick Jagger dances. It evolved, he started out imitating R&B artist and then went off on a tangent away from normal dancing probably reaching escape velocity fueled by drugs. And the way David Bowie danced in this video was not detrimental to his career, not like it was for Billy Squier with "Rock Me Tonite." VH1 called Squier's dance moves in Rock Me Tonite a career-ender.

BILLY SQUIER - Rock Me Tonite


OK Go always produced these kind of one-take videos, but then around about '14 they fell off the Earth.

Lots of bad decisions during the peak music video years of MTV. But that Squier clip is the worst of the worst. I almost posted it but felt it was too obvious.

Best:

Boney M epecially Bobby Ferrell's moves there's something about it that's interesting this dude can move.

Nice thread idea, Neapolitan, and I'll take your good advice:-

I don't enthuse much about male dancers, but Fred Astaire was undeniably stylish, and gave the world of dance the unforgettable dictum, "If it looks like you're working, you ain't working hard enough." This clip is not necessarily his greatest set piece, but it has some technical tricks that might keep non-fans watching:-



As a general rule, I like dance that is uncorreographed, that looks like a spontaneous response to the music. That's why I like the dancing girl in La Bottine Souriante so much:

"Mad World" - Tears for Fears. I always liked this version better than the cover (The Gary Jules version is just waaaay too depressing). Maybe because of the manic dancing of Roland (half of the group and the guy who wrote the song) in it. It just seems to me that it can be defined as really bad or really good dancing. I personally let it fall into the really good kind of dancing..just seems that he didn't really care for any fancy choreographing, just decided to dance the way he felt. And to me, that is the best kind of dancing.

You're right you can't really define his dancing as really good or bad, perhaps just as totally 80s. I watch the video a few times. I like how it was cut. Dancing isn't the main focus of the video. For the most part it comes secondary to Curt's singing. There is only a few scenes and you don't see Roland dance till 1:48 into the video. His style is similar to how other singers danced in the 80s. It's possible it's taken from how people danced in clubs back then, but done in his own personal style. It seems more like free form dancing imo.

Another thing to note, they worked up to his big dance scene. First he's standing on the dock, then he is walking on the dock. Then he could be seen dancing but he is in the background, then they pan over and zoom in and his dancing is the main focus but seen through throw the window. Now for the big dance scene he is outside dancing. Instead of fading out, or switching abruptly to the next scene they superimpose him dancing over the window where Curt is singing. So whoever done the video put some thought into it. Even if Curt Smith said the video was made on the cheap.

(I need to put more than 1 character before the quote)

Love this, people were happy to just throw themselves into it during the 60s..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLXxDMxe18

Hilarious, jump to 3:10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Eaz-1_3iA

and they can't un-see it either. :D



particularly about 1:07 into it.

Stretching the topic a little, but afaik this is the closest that MB comes to a thread dedicated to dance - which seems pretty odd for a music forum.

This vid is less about dance moves, but has that preparation - expectation - costume - scenary stuff that often goes with a dance performance irl. Oh, yes, and music too:-



Always feels good when you have no idea what you are looking at, so not to spoil that pleasure, the answer 's in the spoiler:-

@0:55, 1:50, and 2:25


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o

Slam dancing at it's finest.

The main video I want to highlight in this post is Ingenue by Atoms For Peace. I included two primer videos to understand the complexity of Thom Yorke's choreographic imagination. The first half of the video 00:00 to 04:04 is very much like modern dance (I guess) or whatever it is called. There is a similar, but not very identical type of dancing found in Unknown Tongues. Which is why I included it as a primer for Ingenue. In both videos where do this thing where they switch back and forth. The dancer switches from black to white outfits in Unknown Tongues. Ingenue the "switch" is between Thom Yorke and a female dancer. However Ingenue takes it a step further and they split and dance with each other. They dance as if they were dancing out a story. Then all of a sudden from 04:05 Thom and his dancing partner goes off a choreographic tangent and they do something that's very unusual, something perhaps unscripted. I don't know the name of dance they preform but it is very similar to the "Blueberry" dance. Well enjoy the videos and I hope you learned something new about Thom Yorke.

Jlin - Unknown Tongues


The Karen "We're Not Wrecking It" / "The Blueberry" Dance


Atoms For Peace - Ingenue

Do non-official choreographies count?





If not, I'll submit The Fall's 'Eat Y'rself Fitter' video for the worst dancing category - courtesy of MES, starting at about 3:57.



And for best dancing, just off the top of my head:





And, for live efforts, a good one from Britney (just the dancing...I think the audio was not live)

Yes, in my book they are more enjoyable to watch than many over-thought ensemble set-piece bits of dancing.

Total thanks to Safar for this clip that he posted recently in the World music section. It's so good I thought it deserved more attention, specially for the dancer, who, unless I missed it, doesn't even get a credit in the video. :(

Justin Bieber - Sorry

I'm pretty sure that 90 percent of the success of the song itself is related with this video (which has almost 3.5 BILLION views).

For some reason, your vid reminded me of this one, adidass - even though there's little in common in terms of dance or music:



A catchy song and dance movements that many people can master made The Macarena a huge success in Mexico about 5 years ago. Teenage girls especially were learning the moves and dancing together at parties, etc.

That must have been some strange resurgence because Macarena (and the accompanying dance) was a global smash hit almost 30 years ago (it's from 1993)! I was trying to find the original video but it seems it's not available online, strange.

Edit: I was wrong, what I was thinking of was this cover -> fabebook video which is from 1996.

I think they started the hype.

Jerusalema Dance Challenge - By Fenomenos do Semba




Amaiza-Indian Classical Dance Fusion- Kathak, Bharatnatyam & Odissi

Masaka Kids Africana Dancing Joy Of Togetherness ft 3wash_hip_hop & Karina Palmira

Music project with musicians from Senegal, Guinea, South Africa and Switzerland.

Noumuso - Limaniyah

"An Iranian Couple Was Sentenced To A Decade In Prison For Sharing Their Dance Video:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world...td-orig-zt.cnn

I feel like dancing just out of gratitude that I have never lived under such a repressive theocracy.

All I know is that Beyonce's single ladies is one of the most iconic dance in a music video.

I wonder what Musicharmonicasinger did to get banned already. :/ Music only joined in January 2023 and was posting up till literally 4 days ago.

^ Yes, I wondered about that too, Karice.

Out of curiosity, I checked out Beyonce's song and found this:-



I have no complaints about that as a dance video, and to maintain the gender equality in this thread, here's an extremely iconic video of two men strutting their stuff in the 1964 film, Zorba The Greek, though it may seem anti-climactic after Beyonce:-

Awesome and hilarious