Screw Politics, Let’s Dance!

July 11th, 2007

I’m having a day off reading thinking or talking about politics today, it’s making me depressed and snappy, or should I say more depressed and snappy than usual. The almost stationary Arctic-melt-fed low pressure weather system that’s obliterated summer like a great wet pancake isn’t helping. You can bet what you like that today’ll be the day Bush resigns and I’ll miss it, but what the hell, we all need a little light relief.

So instead, as you’ll have seen from the previous post, I’ve been tootling around YouTube sniffing out amusing inconsequentialities, like jumpstyle.

What’s jumpstyle? Here’s a fairly representative Dutch example, done to the Fratellis’ Chelsea Dagger :

Wikipedia, as always, has more:

Originally, the gabber dance style called “hakken” was used to dance to jumpstyle music, although it is slower than hardcore; but later a new dance evolved called “Ski�n” (to ski). Ski�n means kicking one’s feet forward and backward on the bass line, while the torso goes the opposite way (right foot forward, torso back), once in a while lifting one foot significantly higher than usual to indicate a break in the beat. This dance, usually called “jumpen” nowadays (derived from English, to jump), originated in Belgium in 1997 but has seen a real popularity boost in recent years, gaining widespread fame in Belgium and Northern France around 2002 and more recently in the Netherlands. In other countries such as Germany and Austria it has also garnered some interest, albeit among a limited public. The Belgian DJs Da Boy Tommy and Da Rick are often credited with its invention.

It is also called skank but is different from the skank associated with ska and reggae music.

Often another variation of this dance called “Duo-Jump” is performed by two people who choreograph their movements and perform them in unison along side one another. This variation of the jumpstyle dance also originated in Belgium. Some see similarities in the dance style with inline dancing

Jumpers can go to special jump discotheques, often called “Jumpotheques”; for example “The Oh!” in Gavere. Also special events, like the yearly Bassleader-event in Flanders Expo Ghent, are mostly kept in Belgium, but also events like ReverZe and Explosive Car Tuning or Jumping Is Not A Crime(JINAC) do their part in spreading this music style.

This choppy, jumpy dance, mostly performed by nerdy young white working-class guys, preferably performed in an unexpected public place and filmed on cameraphones, has been the latest craze amongst Netherlandish youth and all over Northern Europe for a quite a while now. There’s a massive seam of homemade jumpstyle videos online and some of them are quite brilliant.

My personal favourite is this French jumpstyler:

It’s the reactions from the passers-by, or rather the lack of them, that’s so funny. I must say I prefer the French jumpstyle style, the NL and DE styles are a bit too much like goosestepping for my liking and besides we all know what Germanic dancing can lead to.

This being YouTube, jumpstyle videos’ve led, inevitably, to cartoon jumpstyle mashups, (if ‘mashup’’s still a word that’s acceptable to use - no doubt I’m showing my middle-age there).

Simpsons jumpstyle