The New York Times Gives Ink to Matt Harding's "Almost Perfect Piece of Internet Art"

My ear isn't exactly to the YouTube grindstone. I had never heard of Matt Harding until I read Charles McGrath's New York Times article about Harding's strange, fascinating, and ultimately thrilling 4-minute video clip.

This guy traveled the world and did a weird dance everywhere he went. It sounds simple, and yet while I watched it I felt almost moved to tears. This video is somehow extraordinary.

Millions of people have watched as well, in just the past two weeks that the video has been up. See it for yourself:

McGrath writes:

In many ways "Dancing" is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it's short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it's 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 -- just a guy dancing.

However you interpret it, you can't watch "Dancing" for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Mr. Harding's, 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.

For those who can't get enough, Harding's outtakes and other vids are now racking up hits in the millions as well. Share it and spread the international, kinesthetic love.

Dan Brown is the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.

Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher

Comments

[zjemi]

I too saw it only yesterday after the NYT article. And I too was moved to tears. I sent it to friends who are having marital problems, convinced that this will be better than all my advice.

I did try the dance at Home Depot but was shushed by my partner. I hope everyone soon knows about this so that I can do silly dances in public without worrying about security guards. Maybe we should send it to as many politicians as we can. Has anyone sent it to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?

[GBartrem]

I liked his first video "Where the hell is Matt", so much that I sent it to lots of friends. I'm looking forward to watching his new one.

[TommyMcCarthy]

Of course Dan is right:...........If you can look at Matt Harding doing his thing among the various versions of our human family (especially the children) and NOT grin..?...­..........­..........­..........­.you truly have no soul.


What does it mean? I think that's the point: it doesn't have to mean anything..­..........

What it says to ME is that despite all the conflict, anger, and suffering in the world, it's a universal truth that human beings, given half a chance, prefer to be happy, ...prefer to get along.....­..........­....PREFER peace.

Maybe Matt's showing up and doing his goofball routine gives peple PERMISSION to express something that's there all the time.

Thx. to Matt and to Dan Brown for making us all aware.

Care to dance?....­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­.........t­m

[mtkamomma]

Lovely. Music and dancing. Simple joys. Humans as family . . .