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 Bonus 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 and Play Roulette for Free instead.

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…

I loved her movements, her body is so flexible it is amazingly sexy. She’s a thin chick but this great body moves just beautifully. She’s a teaser, but a sexy one so that works just fine with me! Who is she??

This sexy woman knows how to dance! Great sexy body that moves exactly the way you want it to….super sexy dance, though the song is not too great.

Amazingly fit sexy gal, performing a very special sexy ass dance to the camera…hot.