Everybody Dance Now

September 8 to October 22, 2006 at EFA Gallery, New York • This video exhibition, curated by Kathleen Goncharov, celebrates the universal human urge to move to the beat (although dogs, frogs, bears, ponies, ghosts, and alligators sometimes act as surrogates for people). The title of the exhibition is literal…everyone dances when all these characters move to the groove and show off their collective talent (or lack there of).

Sunday

Everybody Dance Now!!

A funny clip about an Air Force cadet who gets his groove on on the DL. A viral media classic.

Saturday

Dipsy Does Gangster Rap

Teletubbie, Dipsy is 2 Legit 2 Quit in this homage to MC Hammer.

Sunday

Stephen Colbert IS the King of Glory

Saturday

Dancing Penguin

Happy Feet

Friday

Krump

A haunting krump video


Wednesday

The Daily Dancer: Respect

Daily Dancer, a software developer, posts a new dance every week on his website dailydancer.com. Here he dances to Respect by Aretha Franklin.

Tuesday

How to Dance Like a White Guy

Great Instructional video. Showing all the hippest and raddest dance moves known to white men.

Monday

"Gonna Make You Sweat" Lip Sync

Music video lip sync to "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now" by C&C Music Factory. Performed by Thomas Chen, Jeff Chen, Jason Chen, and others at UCLA (1999).

Saturday

Zuiikin Gals

This strange series of instructional dance/language videos still has me confused enough to say, "Take anything you want."

Zuiikin English : Sankakukin Trouble

Who knew a sound stage could be such a dangerous place.


Zuiikin Gals - Break Up Dance



Zuiikin Gals - Hospitality Dance

Friday

Bananas

Dancin' Man-Go Banana Delight

Anything for attention

Thursday

Van Damm On the Dance floor

Wednesday

Everybody Dance Now Plumi and Schrudi

Tuesday

Face Dancer

Guy able to move every muscle of his face, with the music !

Monday

Every Time We Touch

Everytime We Touch (Car Dancing)


Every Time We Touch (Lunch)
The graduating class of 2006 got control of the lunch room sound system. Chaos ensues to the tune of "Every Time We Touch."

Sunday

German Open Championships 2003 Rumba

Half way through the dance something really extraordinary happens.

Saturday

Worst Music Video Ever

An 80's Finnish music video called "I Wanna Love You Tender" by Armi & Danny. The last half brought tears to my eyes.

Friday

Tha 40's

Tha 40's




Kenwood Academy Prom2



Thursday

Butterfly Lovers

This is gets better and better.

Wednesday

Everybody Dance Now

Beer, bordom and "old skool" nostalgia - a warning to us all. Gav and Rick get over-excited at the arrival of a new web cam and make an impromptu dance video.

Tuesday

Ali G and Shaggy

You're right, that isn't really Ali G.
This here is classic. Its the new Ali G and Shaggy topless performin Me Julie. Such a funny video. Nath is starring as Ali G (check out the beard) and Jamie is starring as Shaggy. By the way....."WEST SIDE IS DA BEST"

Sunday

The Daily Dancer: Everybody Dance Now

Daily Dancer (http://dailydancer.com/) dancing to Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) by C&C Music Factory

Tuesday

Foot Wurk

Me tweekin


Ya boi killin


Spade Vs. Nick
Yes, it's true a footwork battle in the boyz room!



Monday

Everybody Dance

Sunday

Lil Bros

Mah lil bro


My Lil Bro Killin dat U GT SERVED lookin ass

Saturday

Krump Enuf?

Krump in My Sleep


Date Movie Krump


Heavy Metal Krump J-DEMON ASSASSIN aka BABY BEASTY BOI @ royal rumble

Friday

Everybody Dance Now-press release



video still, It Takes Two to Tango, Trine Lise Nedreaas
 
Everybody Dance Now
curated by Kathleen Goncharov
 
Artists: Jake Borndal, Sanford Biggers, caraballo-farman, Maureen Connor, Ben Coonley, Daily Dancer, Kan Xuan, Kaoru Katayama, Mike Kelley, Rodney McMillian,Trine Lise Nedreaas, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Laura Parnes, Barbara Pollack, Ron Rocheleau’s ConcreteTV, Valeska Soares, Michael Smith, Jennifer Sullivan, William Wegman, Wild Record Collection, and Michael Zansky
 

September 8 - October 22, 2006
Opening Reception, September 8, 6-8 pm
Dance Party, Sept. 30, 8 PM - midnight
 
EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th Avenues
 
Hours: Wed. through Sat., 12-6 PM and by appointment
http://everybody-dance-now.blogspot.com/
 
EFA Gallery opens its fall season with a first video only exhibition curated by Kathleen Goncharov.
Everybody Dance Now takes its title from the opening line of the 1990 C&C Music Factory song. This exhibition, curated by Kathleen Goncharov, showcases work by an international cast of contemporary artists as well as excerpts from popular culture venues such as public access television, You Tube, and Google Video. The show celebrates the universal human urge to move to the beat (although dogs, frogs, bears, ponies, ghosts, and alligators sometimes act as surrogates for people). The title of the exhibition is literal…everyone dances when all these characters move to the groove and show off their collective talent (or lack there of).
Although many of the works in the exhibition are amusing, they often have a dark humor and address such serious issues as gender and racial stereotypes, war, violence, media manipulation, globalization, and cultural conflict. Other videos deal with more personal matters that concern us all, such as aging, mortality, the dilemmas of adolescence, and the sexual insecurities that follow us through life.
Dog Duet, by video pioneer William Wegman, features the artist’s famous weimaraners who perform in perfect synch. Trine Lise Nedreaas’ poetic work is a life size projection that depicts an 87 year-old man dancing the tango with an invisible partner in an abandoned ballroom. Valeska Soares’ subject is similar but her dancers perform with imaginary partners on a mirrored floor in a Brazilian nightclub designed by Oscar Niemeyer.
Performance artist Michael Smith’s character “Mike” is a parody of the “everyman” who craves social acceptance but like most of us ultimately ends up a loser. Smith contributes excerpts of his dancing alter ego from videos he’s made over the past twenty-five years. Another everyman, an unabashed nerd, the Daily Dancer, who posts on the Internet, trips over his vacuum cleaner while dancing to Aretha Franklin’s Respect. TV personality Stephen Colbert dances to the hymn King of Glory in an Internet clip and another found video teaches black people how to “dance like a white guy.”
Mike Kelley’s contributes two short videos from his Day is Done project in which adults reenact the “extracurricular” activities depicted in photographs from old high school yearbooks. Laura Parnes and Jennifer Sullivan also look at adolescents, in particular participants in amateur talent shows. Rodney McMillian dances to a Prince song in a disturbing blue mask and Sanford Biggers makes the connection between Hip Hop and Kung Fu. Maureen Connor’s video installation recalls 1950s insecurities and gender stereotypes in a children’s dance class. Barbara Pollack collaborates with her 18 year old son on a two-channel video where he and his friends dance in a simulated mosh pit and perform a tableaux of an infamous photograph from Abu Ghraib. Michael Zansky also deals with failed US policies and asks whether we are dancing our way back into the primordial slime led by Godzilla, who bears a striking resemblance to Rona ld Reagan.
Kaoru Katayama, a Japanese artist living in Spain explores cultural confusion in a video of traditional dancers from Salamanca who try to use their native steps while dancing to techno music. Christodoulos Panayiotou’s video is documentation of Slow Dance Marathon, a performance in which total strangers slow dance over a twenty-four hour period to sentimental pop love songs. Kan Xua has a hilarious and surprising take on Chinese revolutionary opera and caraballo-farman’s floor projection is a ballet of vibrators. Ben Coonley’s mechanical ponies talk and do The Pony to a Chubby Checker song as well as teach themselves the Texas two-step.
Continuing with the animal theme, the collaborators responsible for Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s Wild Record Collection feature their toy polar bear Snuffles and his stuffed animal friends who dance to cuts from their collection of thousands of LPs. Another MNN favorite, Ron Rocheleau’s Concrete TV, features brilliantly edited clips of strip club dancers, car crashes and brief scenes from popular movies. Jake Borndal creates a special TV and Internet lounge for viewing these programs and found footage.
Everybody Dance Now presents work that ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime; some are profound and others are downright silly, but they all reflect the human condition through the urge to dance.
 
 
***
 
Kathleen Goncharov is an independent curator and critic. She has served as Adjunct Curator at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, US Commissioner to the 50th Venice Biennale, Public Art Curator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Curator of the Collection at The New School. She lives and works in New York City.
 
This exhibition is presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, with additional support from The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Helen Keel Burke Cheritable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, RishiGanti, Materials for the Arts, and Carnegie Corporation Inc, and the generosity of many individuals.
 
The EFA Gallery is a curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist's creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.