FAX MACHINE ANTHEMS
DANCE DANCE DANCE
ON MUSIC VIDEOS AND DANCING, AND DANCING IN MUSIC VIDEOS
Both Wilbur and Moore don't dance. Well, maybe we do, but only with the doors locked and the curtains closed, or when we are drunk and convinced nobody can see us. Also, if we secretly dance, professionals (or anyone with a pair of eyes) might not actually call it dancing. Let's say that we don't dance, we throw around limbs bouncing from wall to wall, knocking over lamps and injuring ourselves beyond repair. It hurts.
There is undeniable beauty in a well executed choreography though, and sometimes they are just simply fun to watch, so we decided to dedicate a couple of words to dancing, and in particular dancing in music videos.
First let's talk dancing in movies for a bit. Most of us can probably remember iconic dance intermezzos in movies. Uma Thurman and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction for instance, or maybe the uplifting factory scene with Björk in Dancer in the Dark. Great stuff, but two dance scenes that stuck with us in particular (and yes, we were both fans of this director growing up), came out of Hal Hartley movies, and perhaps exemplify the element of surprise and quirkiness that we like so much even better. In Simple Men, Sonic Youth's Kool Thing becomes the backdrop to which the cast erupts into a rather unique dancing style probably similar to how Wilbur and Moore move behind closed doors. Surviving Desire stuns with a short, seemingly out-of-the-blue and extremely random dance routine that might speak even more to the imagination. Of course both might find their inspiration in Godard's Bande à part, but that doesn't make them less fascinating,
Movies and music videos are not the same, but this trip down memory lane triggered us to revisit some of our favourite music videos where dance routines are driving the visual appeal, without drawing any extra attention to the ones everyone already knows, like MJ's Thriller, Björk's It's Oh So Quiet, Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice or Feist's 1234.
We hope you like them too.
