Category: dance

Christopher Walken dances to “Come and Get Your Love”

September 8, 2020 • 2:30 pm

UPDATE: The original song that Walken was dancing to wasn’t “Come and Get your Love,” but “Weapon of Choice” by Fatboy Slim. The original video is here, and I’ve also embedded it below. Walken’s dancing is even more on the mark with the original song.

Still, I love the Redbone song, and have left it in.  I wonder how they got Walken to do the dancing.

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This video absolutely freaks me out, but what do you expect with Christopher Walken? I didn’t know the man even danced, but I recall that when a reader posted the video in the comments not long ago, they added that Walken was once a dancer. Indeed, Wikipedia notes that  “Walken initially trained as a dancer at the Washington Dance Studio before moving on to dramatic stage roles and then film.”

And what a song to make the man move his bones! Yes, there are stunt doubles in there, but most of the hoofing is done by Walken himself.

I had forgotten who did that song, which really is a toe-tapper, so I looked it up, finding that it was done in 1974 by Redbone, the first Native American band to have a big hit (this song went to the top 4 on Billboard). Here’s a live performance of “Come and Get Your Love“, written by two of the band members, Pat and Lolly Vegas (Lolly is the lead singer, Pat on bass). Oddly, it starts with 45 seconds of an Indian dance.  The lyrics are strange and enigmatic, but the tune and performance are great, which of course is why Walken danced to it.

Readers’ photos

August 18, 2020 • 7:45 am

Remember that I will consider photos of nearly every subject, so long as they’re good. I count everything on the planet as “honorary wildlife.”

The wildlife in this post are specimens of Homo sapiens, again photographed by Joe Routon. His notes are indented:

When I carry my camera, I’m always looking for something that’s beautiful. There’s so much ugliness and turmoil in the world today—I need beauty to maintain my sanity. A favorite subject of mine is the dance, one of the most beautiful and inspiring art forms in the world.

Through ballet, the human body is transformed magically into a thing of great beauty.

In my travels, I look for opportunities to photograph dancers, usually folk dancers in foreign countries. This is a traditional folk dancer I photographed in Thailand.
Here are two Malaysian dancers I photographed.
Here is a folk dancer from the Ballet Folklórico whom I photographed in Mexico City.
This photo shows folk dancers I photographed in India. I was not able to ascertain the meaning or this dance, which was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
In today’s hectic world, we need to be mindful and aware of the beauty around us. It’s there—we just have to take the time to see it.

An optical illusion dance

April 8, 2013 • 12:19 pm

Matthew Cobb sent me this, demanding that I post it.  Since he’s a good contributor here, I bow to his wishes:

You have to admit that it’s quite clever—and disconcerting. According to Dr. Cobb, there are others like this on YouTube. I’ll take his word for it.

The grace of a moggie

March 13, 2013 • 4:22 am

Another awesome cat video from Japan.

In less than a second, this tabby leaps into the air and catches a toy bear.  In slow motion, the grace is revealed: the cat catches the bear with its front paws, transfers the toy to its mouth, twists around using its tail as counterbalance, and then retracts its rear feet to land on its forelegs.

Can any d-g (or Nureyev, for that matter) produce such a lovely leap? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

h/t:Gattina

Astaire Week: A coda—Fred’s favorite

September 6, 2012 • 11:47 am

The Nicholas Brothers (Fayard and Harold) were a pair of fantastically talented tap dancers who were underappreciated because, being black, they appeared only in minor films of the 1930s and 1940s starring other black actors.  But they were stupendous, highly acrobatic, and, as you’ll see in this performance from the film “Stormy Weather” (1943), could do something that even Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly couldn’t (from Wikipedia):

One of their signature moves was a “no-hands” splits, where they went into the splits and returned to their feet without using their hands. Gregory Hines declared that if their biography was ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one could duplicate them. Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.

Fred Astaire once called this performance, a dance to the song Jumpin’ Jive, “the greatest dance number ever filmed.”

If you know the music of this era, you’ll recognize bandleader Cab Calloway talking jive at the beginning.

h/t: Amy