{"id":2537,"date":"2008-07-08T11:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T11:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching.html"},"modified":"2008-07-08T11:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T11:39:00","slug":"the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching.html","title":{"rendered":"The private dancer…with four million watching"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> Remember the wonderful video<\/a> of Matt Harding, dancing his heart out? <\/p>\n

The mainstream media has finally caught up with him, and his story is splashed on the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n

In many ways \u201cDancing\u201d is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it\u2019s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it\u2019s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all \u2014 just a guy dancing.<\/p>\n

However you interpret it, you can\u2019t watch \u201cDancing\u201d for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding\u2019s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus. <\/p>\n

Children, not surprisingly, turn out to be the best at picking up on Mr. Harding\u2019s infectious vibe. There\u2019s frequently a grown-up, on the other hand \u2014 especially one in the front row of a crowd \u2014 who tends to ham it up and make a fool of himself.<\/p>\n

The other remarkable thing about the \u201cDancing\u201d phenomenon is that it is, to a very considerable extent, a creation of the Internet. It doesn\u2019t just live, so to speak, on the Web; it was the Web that, more or less accidentally, brought it into being. The current video is actually the third iteration of a project that began in 2003, when a friend, using a Canon pocket camera with the capacity to record brief videos (when it was still something of a novelty), shot Mr. Harding doing his dance in Hanoi.<\/p>\n

It was the equivalent of taking a photograph as a souvenir, Mr. Harding said in a phone conversation recently while driving with his girlfriend in Northern California. Mr. Harding, who grew up in Westport, Conn., skipped college at the suggestion of his father, who didn\u2019t see the point of paying tuition for someone he thought was unmotivated. He has been employed in a video game store and as a designer of video games, but prefers just to travel. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing I\u2019m really good at,\u201d he said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check the Times link for more. <\/p>\n

And, of course, take a moment, crank up the volume, and just watch the whole thing again and smile<\/a>. Make sure you click on the “high quality” link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the wonderful video of Matt Harding, dancing his heart out? The mainstream media has finally caught up with him, and his story is splashed on the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times: In many ways \u201cDancing\u201d is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it\u2019s short, pleasingly weird and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\nThe private dancer...with four million watching - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The private dancer...with four million watching - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember the wonderful video of Matt Harding, dancing his heart out? The mainstream media has finally caught up with him, and his story is splashed on the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times: In many ways \u201cDancing\u201d is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it\u2019s short, pleasingly weird and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-08T11:39:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SHOMYHAzftI\/AAAAAAAACmc\/gk3YfPbgpEg\/s400\/1181498778_g_0%5B1%5D.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The private dancer...with four million watching - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/the-private-dancerwith-four-million-watching.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The private dancer...with four million watching - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"Remember the wonderful video of Matt Harding, dancing his heart out? 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