Goat Farmer Gives Us Needed Distraction

Jay Lavery enjoys a little dance, and so do we, as
he works in the goat barn on his farm. 

In these times, we all need a silly distraction, and I'm happy to oblige occasionally.

So here you go.

At the bottom of this post we have a video that features Jay Lavery, a New York farmer that starts with him rather morosely tending to the barn with his goats.

But soon things change dramatically. Sia's song "Cheap Thrills" comes on and the mood lightens dramatically.

The goats look a little nonplussed at the whole thing, but Lavery sure is having a good time. By extension, so are we.

Lavery told the Huffington Post that he often does goofy things like this and shares them on his Facebook page.

But for whatever reason, this particular one went viral, and it's the perfect distraction when you're getting down.

Lavery did this little dance his Permaculture Inn in Sharon Springs, New York, aboug 180 miles north of Manhattan.

Watch and enjoy, this video from Lavery's Facebook. page

Canadian Sikhs Make Snow Shoveling Awfully Fun

The Maritime Bhangra Group in Canada found
a way to actually make snow shoveling fun. 

I confess to grumbling a bit Thursday when I had to shovel about two and a half inches of new snow from my driveway.

Not a big deal, but still. vaguely annoying.

Maybe I should take a lesson from these three Sikh guys in Nova Scotia, Canada, who made a viral video that put the fun back in snow shoveling.

They're part of the Maritime Bhangra Group. 

The video is at the bottom of this post and is totally worth the watch.

Bonus: The video raises funds for the ALS Foundation of Nova Scotia, and that's always a good thing

Here's the video:

Dad Dancing With Bride At Wedding Is The Distraction We All Need

Mikayla Phillips and her father, Nathan Ellison
put on an epic performance at Phillips' recent wedding.  

I know there are about three gazillion YouTube videos of people dancing joyously at weddings, some choreographed, some not.

But since we need a distraction from current events, this one shows bride Mikayla Phillips dancing with her father Nathan Ellison at her October 8 wedding in Utah.

The guy has GREAT moves, and is not shy about making a happy spectacle of himself.

ABC News says Phillips is a trained dancer, but her father is not. They rehearsed for just a week before the big day. Not bad for such a short training time.

It's quite a rigorous performance, too, so it's good that Nathan appears to have the stamina to handle it.

The takeaway: When in doubt, dance.

Segway Scooter Dance Video Sort Of Rescues Justin Bieber Mess

Justin Bieber's new song predictably sucks, but
at least somebody made a cool dance video based
on the song.  

I don't like Justin Bieber's new song, "What Do You Mean."

Typical boring, pop fluff that's totally uninteresting. I expect nothing less from Bieber.

However a choreographer named David Moore has put together a performance by five dancers atop self-balancing Segways that at least created a fun, interesting video from Bieber's "What Do You Mean" mess.

It's worth the watch:

"Uptown Funk" Makes Treadmill Workout Not Boring

Carson Dean dances to "Uptown Funk"
 on a treadmill. He's awesome, but don't try
this at the gym. You'll be embarrassed.  

I know, I know, "Uptown Funk," while a great pop song, is definitely overplayed these days and we should give it a rest.

I also know that a workout on a treadmill, or as I sometimes call it, a dreadmill, can be very, very boring,

But a California choreographer named Carson Dean has breathed new life into "Uptown Funk" and especially a treadmill.

He's got a video that's going viral of him dancing to that tune on a treadmill. And it's totally a lot of fun to watch.

According to the Huffington Post, Dean uploaded the video Saturday. As of Wednesday afternoon, the video had racked up more than 2.6 million views as of early Thursday morning.

And why not? It's a lot of fun to watch. But I wouldn't try this at the gym today. There are already too many treadmill fail videos out there and you wouldn't want to star in one.

So here's Carson Dean's treadmill dance:

A Guy Named L'eto Does Impossible Things With His Body When He Dances.

I don't know how this guy, named L'eto, can
move his body the way he does.  

There was a big hip hop event in Amsterdam back in August called Summer Dance Forever.   

It was a big ta-do for the hip hop world.  Among the many events were dance competitions, and a lot of people just KILLED it out there with their moves.

But nobody can beat a guy named L'eto, who you can watch in the video, below. A lot of the video looks like stop action, but from everything I can tell, it's all real, with L'eto actually managing to give us optical illusions with his body

I haven't been able to find out much about L'eto on line, but GAWD I hope we see more of him in the future. He's amazing. Even if the dance moves and the music aren't your style, it's mesmerizing.

And if the video at the bottom of this post isn't enough, here's a web site with more of his videos. 

Watch the video to see for yourself.

One Legged Dancer Does It MUCH Better Than You

Here's a random video, posted in August, of a breakdancer with one leg. Um, he's beyond pretty good.

I couldn't immediately find anything on line that identifies him or whether he does this for a living.

But he should.  Scroll down a bit to watch the vid:

Little Owl Does A Dance, Because You Should On A Nice Weekend

This owl wants to help you dance away your cares
this summer weekend. 

This video, going viral,  shows a little Morepork, an owl that was at a wildlife rescue center in New Zealand.

It appears he has decided to do a little dance, because what the hell.

This verbiage of importance from New Zealand Bird Rescue:

"New Zealand Bird Rescue supports the community by assisting many thousands of sick, orphaned, injured and lost birds every year. Birds that come into care here are rehabilitated until they are ready to release back into the wild. We accept and care for all New Zealand birds; no birds is ever turned away."

The morepork in this video was eventually released back into the wild.

It's just a little video to put you in the right, happy weekend move, so watch:

Totally Awesome Dance Projection Video To Start Your Monday Right

Today's demonstration of people who do things better than you is this dancer, working with projections, to give you a really awesome dance performance interacting with projections

Really awesome:

Saturday Fun: Random Bird Grooves To Daft Punk

To get your juices flowing on a Saturday morning I have a random video of a random bird on a random street grooving very nicely to Daft Punk's "Something About You."

You're welcome:

Guy Dances To the OCD Beat For YouTube

I must have a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder, since, just on a lark, I've been taking a photo of the same spot in my yard in St. Albans Vermont every day since mid-March.

This guy did the same dance routine every day for 100 days
and video'd it. Just because.  

I'm documenting on how the scene changes from the depths of winter to high summer.  (I've got to figure out how to change that series of still photos into a video.)

Anyway, somebody else has taken this type of OCD to new heights. He did the same dance routine in his room daily for 100 days and recorded the whole series on a GoPro camera.

It's strangely entertaining, though, so I have to give him that.

Watch and judge for yourself:

79-Year-Old Salsa Dance Now Wowing The World

One of the biggest viral videos this year is one that came out this month: It shows acrobatic salsa dancer Paddy Jones, and her partner Nico on the show "Britain's Got Talent."  

Paddy Jones and her dance partner Nico om
"Britain's Got Talent."  

Jones is 79 years old.

And amazing.

She already holds the Guinness World Record title as the oldest acrobatic salsa dancer and has already won a number of talent shows.

But her star turn on "Britain's Got Talent" and the rather moving give and take between the judges and Jones is taking the world by storm.

She's more proof that talent and fitness and poise is for people of any age.

This is especially true in the video after Simon Cowell prematurely pressed his "reject" button before the performance really got off the ground.

He regretted the reject and happily praised Jones' performance.

Watch and dance along with Paddy Jones:

Thursday Dance Party: Superfun Supercut of People Dancing In Films

Supercuts from YouTube are always fun. A lot of them are little glimpses of movies that fit a theme.

Dancing seems to occur in most movies, or at least many. So here's a highly entertaining supercut of 246 movies in which people dance.

See if you can count how many movies you recognize.

If you need help, just go to the About section beneath the YouTube video. You might have to click on "more" to see them all.

Enjoy!

6-Year Old Break Dancer Will Blow You Away

An amazing video surfaced in the past couple of days from a breakdancing tournament in France held Saturday.

It's the baby division of the competition, in which pre-teens show their stuff. It opens with a boy who looks to be about nine years old, looking incredibly impressive.

Then a six year old girl identified only as Bgirl Terra appears, dressed in a grey sweat suit with red stripes, and shows us how it's done. Big Time. (I love how the nine year old, impressed, is eventually reduced to just pointing at the six year old phenom.

Watch and be amazed.

Best, Funniest, Strangest Dubstep

YouTube is now stuffed with great, good and bad dubstep dance performers, some of whom can really move their bodies in seemingly impossible ways. 

Some of them are too cool for us. They just give that menacing glare, and turn their dancing into a cliche.

However, I found on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog, a perfect dubstep video of two brothers, Johnnathan and Joshua Gerard. The pair   show a sense of humor, and a willingness to be a little strange and weird.  That's what makes the video, below, so fun to watch. Enjoy!

Derkin Tokmak Probably Can't Get a Handicapped Parking Sticker

My hero of the day is Derkin Tokmak, a performer with Circ du Soleil. I found a video of his that's absolutely amazing that you can see at the bottom of this post.

Tokmak, 28, contracted polio when he was one year old, according to his Web site's bio.  He was left without control of his left leg, and he lack some control of his right leg.

Despite that, he grew up to become a break dancer, then hooked up with Circ du Soleil. His prowess at dancing, using his crutches as part of his breathtaking, acrobatic act, probably means the DMV would turn him down for a handicapped parking sticker. 

It appears Tokmak doesn't care about that. Watch him dance, so next time you won't whine about how you move a little awkwardly after twistting your ankle a bit:

Something Called Dubstep. Dancer Wows

A viral video going around proves that I'm an out of touch old man.

The guy in the video is dancing something called Dubstep. It's a type of music, and a type of dance, I guess. I'd never heard of it until now. I guess my brain is still in 1978 or some damn thing,

The song is a version of the hit song "Pumped Up Kicks," by Foster the People, modified to be Dubstep. The song is slowed, a lot of production elements are added, and there's an intense base vibe to it at times. You have to listen to understand.

But the dancing is amazing, even if you don't like that type of movement. It looks like there's some sort of video editing trick going on, but I'm assured this is really the guy moving without any editing tricks. Really cool, Watch:

Cool Fun With Bodies

Today I offer you two videos of some pretty incredible effects people created with dancing and music.
The first is a music video from OK Go, who teamed up with Pilobulus for the video. OK Go is famous for their innovative videos, including a Rube Goldberg routine that is simply amazing.

The other video comes from last night's America's Got Talent, which features a group called Team Illuminate, which use glow lights, dancing, music, computer technology and acrobatics to really give compelling performances. They wowed the judges and the audience with their best performances yet. The videso are below, with OK Go first.

Who Needs Dancing With the Stars?

I admit I've been watching "Dancing with the Stars." and have been impressed by how much the finalists have improved.

The final four stars performed last night, and I guess we find out who might get axed tonight. (I'm guessing Ralph Maccio, but what do I know?

But who cares about Dancing With the Stars when there are even better dancers out there. Like in the following video of a street dancer in Paris. I didn't know any human can control every muscle in his body like this. It's amazing. Watch: