Tom called me away from my new favorite TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance?”, last night so I could see a new video posted to You Tube that had already gotten 250,000 viewings during the day. Turns out it was a dance video, though of a completely different ilk than what I had been watching. I should pause here for a moment to tell you that I am a reformed ballerina. After devoting a decade of my childhood to the discipline, I opted to pursue a life that consisted of more than the strict regimen of distrust, diet coke, and cigarettes the profession seemed to demand. I branched out in college to embrace a variety of other styles, including what Fox calls “contemporary” but we called “modern.” A Blues Brother piece left me with a severely sprained ankle one semester (note the bad perm and MC Hammer genie pants which totally date the photo). A later improv skit left me with a broken nose…turns out when one of the guys below picks you up, flings you upside down, and cracks your septum across his shin, it’s likely to deviate.
Anyway, in all my years of dancing, I never learned to do what Matt Harding does. I’m going to have to say that in my current state of mind and stage of life, his dancing is more inspirational to me even than Benji’s (though Benji is nothing short of fantastic). Basically, he’s a young guy who quit his job to travel around the world. Along the way someone suggested that he videotape himself doing a silly dance everywhere he went. He did, posted the video, and became an overnight internet sensation. He went back to work but soon was approached by Stride Gum, which sponsored him to take another RTW circuit and continue the dancing on their dime. WOW! A man after our own hearts! A dancer, a traveler, AND a businessman! Check out his video at his site.
In a bizarre “it’s a small world” twist, it turns out he was working for an old friend of ours from Yale when he accepted the offer from Stride. Sometimes coincidence is just creepy.
