The professionals

The important word in that above paragraph is ‘professional’ and so this Sizzling hot infos relates to that somewhat; it’s all about how to behave at the gaming tables and slot machines and specifically why you shouldn’t dance in some sort of crazed victory celebration.

A casino is an environment unlike many others although the etiquette you should display once inside is really no different from how you should behave in real life.  Being polite to everyone is always a good start – tip the dealers and the cocktail waitresses and everyone will appreciate it.  Dress appropriately for the type of casino in which you find yourself – you may not be in an exclusive London or Monte Carlo venue but try to keep the shorts and sandals to a minimum.

But we’re a dance -related website and the ultimate purpose of this post is to try and dissuade you from performing some sort of embarrassing dance-related victory.  The temptation may occasionally be overwhelming – imagine you’ve had enough of Play Roulette for Free and have had stuck $50 on Red 23.  The ball rolls into the slot and you win a hefty sum.  A small cheer is appropriate in the situation, followed by a big tip for the croupier – what you shouldn’t do is an Irish jig or other nationality base dance to celebrate the win.

Similarly, picture yourself playing in the final two (the heads-up) of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.  You’ve taken advantage of the Casino Bonus Offers, call your opponents all-in and win.  Stand up, congratulate your opponent, celebrate with your fans but for God’s sake don’t be tempted to dance.  It will be on Youtube for ever, your moment of triumph ruined by your stupid antics.  No Dancing!

Of course it’s pretty rare I get the opportunity to write about dancing and gambling in the same post but on a rare occasion the opportunity comes up.  The motivation came from a medium size loss at a poker table several days ago which in turn reminded me of another time, several years ago, when I’d lost a little more than that at a real life poker table in Las Vegas.  Hours of playing without a break had sapped my will to work out who was bluffing and who didn’t have a clue.  A fateful ‘all-in’ call lost me my shirt and made me realise that a day away from the tables would not be a bad idea. No Casino News is not necessarily bad news.

But what to do?  What can you do in the global home of gambling when you don’t want to gamble?  I didn’t really want to leave the city; I’d done the Grand Canyon excursions before and visited the Hoover Dam more than once so I looked a little closer to home.  The answer was to check out the world class shows available at the very same casinos at which I was losing my money on Free Book of Ra Games.  As a man on his own in a city with lots to offer I perhaps could have spent a few enjoyable hours at a lap dancing club but I decided, as Ron Burgundy says, to stay classy. 

I’d shied away from musical entertainment previously; my girlfriend had persuaded me to see Miss Saigon once and I was so appalled at the whole dreadful affair that we mutually agreed that I would never have to go again.  It looked like it might have been a good story which, for me, was spoiled by all the singing.  She’d go with her Mum in future.

Anyway, back to Vegas and my experience.  I’m not going to go into detail as to what I saw but just to say that when the time comes for a break from the Live Dealer Casino, give it a go.  At any one time in Las Vegas you can see the likes of Cirque du Soleil, the Blue Man Group, tributes to greats such as Elvis and The Beatles and shows from still-here stars such as Elton John and Rod Stewart.  You won’t regret it.

The show, as we all know by now, was written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant and centered around the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company in the non-fictitious town of Slough.  In particular it followed the thoughts and deeds of David Brent, the office manager, in a fly-on-the-wall manner which exposed his ego, his vanity and all his myriad weaknesses for the viewers of the ‘mockumentary’.

Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais

In one of the storylines a colleague named Neil Godwin, who runs the nearby Swindon branch of Wernham Hogg, receives a promotion which makes him Brent’s superior, much to the protagonists chagrin.  Brent immediately becomes resentful of Neil and this manifests itself wonderfully when the office takes part in a charity day.  Neil and a female worker from the Slough office practice and produce a classy dance which they perform in front of Brent and his staff.  Brent takes exception to this and embarks on a bizarre dance of his own, leaping into an astonishingly embarrassing performance laced with cliched dance moves and aggression.

As you’ll see from the video, although the staff (and Neil) are encouraging and clapping along to begin with, they soon start to step back in embarrassed silence as Brent persists in the bizarre ritual.  It was an iconic moment in what was already an iconic show and was surely one of the hardest comedic moments of television to watch amongst many others in the series.  Gervais is probably tainted by the dance forever but he won’t mind; it only helped to make The Office one of the most memorable comedy series ever produced and one which has deservedly made its way around the world.

It was a little difficult to understand the story behind the dance to begin with.  What was going on?  Were the prisoners forced to do this?  If not, how do you persuade a bunch of incarcerated drug dealers and murderers to join a dance class?  Well it all seems to have been the work of the progressive prison boss, Byron F. Garcia.  Apparently wanting to take the prisoner’s minds of the daily grind, he initiated a programme of dance classes to enable the inmates to stay mentally and physically fit.  So it turns out Thriller wasn’t the first mass participation dance performed by the residents of Cebu PDRC.

According to Garcia, dancing is something of a way of life in the Philippines and is the “language of the soul“.  Despite this supposed love of dance, the inmates were not particularly receptive to the idea to the begin with and on the first attempt pelted a visiting choreographer with their shoes.  Other senior staff members were not so sure either, concerned about the security dangers of hundreds of inmates together in one place in an understaffed facility.

Of course it went ahead nevertheless and early dance routines were choreographed to songs such as Pink Floyd’s Brick in the Wall and the Village People’s YMCA.  Of course the Thriller routine is the one which eventually caught everyone’s attention and in the first week after its being uploaded, more than 1 million views had been recorded.  Several years later the number of view is in the tens of millions.

So next time your browsing Youtube, don’t just check out the Thriller video, have a look for some of Byron F. Garcia’s other creations.

Speechless?  You should be.  In fact if that’s the first time you’ve ever seen this nonsense and you’re not struck down with amused horror, there’s something wrong with you.  You’ll be better off checking out these casino offers. Morris dancing is one of those English traditions which is immensely unpopular even it’s own country.  For the sake of fairness, we should explain a little bit about it though; it certainly dated back to the beginning of the 17th century and possibly earlier.  The word ‘Morris’ probably derives from ‘Moorish’ and the dance may be related to the celebrations which followed the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492.  As if medieval life wasn’t annoying and unpleasant enough, a Shakespearean actor named William Kempe Morris Danced his way from London to Norwich in 1600 for the entertainment of himself – an event which he wrote about in his Nine Daies Wonder in the same year.

At this point it was a Whitsun dance but  Oliver Cromwell’s puritans put a stop to all such fun and games until the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660.  The practive of holding festivals were restored and Morris Dancing was once again linked to the Whitsun holiday.

It declined in popularity until 1899 when a folklorist named Cecil Sharp encountered a rare dance in Headington Quarry; he brought it back to London where it was eventually performed by an all-female dance troupe at the Espérance Club.  This seemed to be the trigger for a Morris revival and several teams, male, female and mixed, began to pop up around the country.

Tradition dictates that Morris Dancing involves bells, handkerchiefs and sticks (as you can see from the video) but there are variations – clogs are sometimes worn as are differing noisy objects – depending on the region.  Avoid it all if you can.

At first glance it may appear to be type of pointless nonsense that gap-year travellers get up to the first time they leave their own country but it quickly becomes obvious it’s a little more than that.  Check it out below before we go any further:

As you can see it’s thing to behold; there’s a great, uplifting soundtrack, it’s well put together and the protagonists have clearly made the effort to visit some of those less travelled countries.  It’s no lazy trip through South East Asia or Australia – you can see clips from Bhutan, Zanzibar, Kuwait, Iceland and a memorable one from the Demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

The momentum behind the idea and the video seems to have been the concept of a couple of Canadians called Matt Ashdown and Bradley Morris who conceived The Gratitude Dance before the trip began.  Not only is it entertaining but it’s also a message about promoting happiness.  Although it may look very ‘spur of the moment’, a lot of planning went into the 42 country, 14 month trip;  people who signed up to Matt’s website after seeing his previous videos were emailed in advance when he came to their country to let them know when and where he would be dancing and filming.  Some countries were more difficult than others and I’ll leave you with the following video from Matt himself to help explain how it all came about:

I love those How-Tos Dance Videos, I put them on a learn a few quick steps before going out or something, mostly just for fun but it does get handy. You never know when you’ll find yourself in a hip-hop club, with many nice girls around. You don’t want to just stand there…that’s the first lesson, there will be more!

This group of Korean dancers is performing dance covers to many hit songs, and they are especially into Beyonce. Fine with me, I chose this video of them, where the outfit makes this beautiful dance also pretty sexy. In other dances they wear too much, but here they wear those sexy black outfits that make them hot.

Kelly Brook dances with passion, and you feel it with every breath she takes during this beautiful dance. It may be on TV, but Kelly is real. So reak and so sexy. This is from Strickly Come Dancing, and I wonder how she dances when she’s all alone…