“Matt” is just “some guy”. He quit his job and decided to tour the world… when he was travelling, and taking pictures, the friend he was travelling with said “Why don’t you do your goofy dance?” So he did… and ended up filming himself doing his goofy dance all over the world. When he got home, he pieced together a video and uploaded it, and it kinda went viral - “Dancing 2005”.
So, Stride gum came to him and said “How’d you like to do it again?”, and paid for him to go around the world, doing his goofy dance - “Dancing 2006”.
People were emailing him and asking “Can I come dance with you?”, and he thought this sounded fun, and Stride liked the idea, so they paid again for him to do it again – “Dancing 2008”. It’s been hosted many other places as well, along with downloads, but the one YouTube copy of “Dancing 2008” has about 38 million views at this point.
For those that haven’t seen it: Dancing 2008
So, he wanted to make a fourth video. This time he doesn’t have sponsorship. He just has a suitcase full of books and t-shirts, and basically uses the money he gets from selling t-shirts at one place to buy the gas to drive to the next place.
After Toronto, he’s off headed towards New York City and then down the East Coast, and then off to Europe.
Then, eventually he’ll edit “Dancing 2011” together. There’s no guarantee that any of the Toronto footage will make the final edit, but the moment the video’s ready, I’ll get an e-mail.
When I heard, back at the start of the year, that he was going out again, I was feeling rather silly, so I signed up to be notified if he was ever coming near here (although Toronto did seem highly likely). I then promptly forgot all about it until I got an email a couple of days ago.
Someone had suggested Dundas Square as a possible location. Since he is doing this on the ultra-cheap, it’s not like he travels the world first, scouting locations. Sometimes he knows where he’d like to go, but he often relies on the locals to have good places for a dance shoot. Unfortunately, Dundas Square isn’t public… it’s privately owned. As soon as his assistant started getting out the tripod (and a swarm of about 60-80 people grouped around Matt to say “hi” to him), security came over to have a little chat.
They discussed it for quite some time… what we wanted to do and all that. Twice the security guard left to call the management company and try to get permission. The final answer was “no”. So, we wandered, en mass, a couple of blocks away to Trinity Square.
There was a pond. Most folks took off their shoes and socks and plunged in (it was a record-setting, unbelievably hot day after all). However, RG had worn suede shoes, and had badly dry, cracked skin on his feet – didn’t want to play around in the muck and filth with open sores. There was a ledge that kind of jutted into the pond. The few of us who didn’t want to wade, were on the ledge. But they took care in arranging the camera and the people, so that everyone who wanted to do it would be in-frame.
So, since most of the folks were about a foot and a half below me, it doesn’t matter that I was at the back… if the Toronto footage makes the final cut, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb (both because of my unbelievably bad dancing, and because I’ll look like I’m about 9 feet tall, towering over everyone else. :wink: In the picture of me up there ^^^ you can see his assistant with the tripod up on the monument to the right, and you can see the pond to the left… you can see the ledge I was standing on.
But, the pond kind of hampered things. When we filmed the group trying to all do his goofy dance, it didn’t go very well. Matt said it hurt, trying to do it.
For this latest video, he’d been trying to do a few other actual dances with the groups – teaching them when he showed up. But most of his ideas were likewise hampered by the water – they apparently involved quite a bit of footwork. So we kinda improvised a couple of other dances. We did the “Motown Shuffle” and another dance. So, if Toronto does make the final cut, I have no idea which (bad) dance you’ll end up seeing us all do. :wink:
