Let’s look at Mjin’s criteria:
Following the music:
We can’t hear the music she’s dancing to - it’s not the music we’re listening to.
Technical skill: Mjin gives her a 2/10 because “[s]ome of the ‘locking’ stuff she does might require some practice, but that’s about it.” What would be techinical then? Acrobatics? Again, this isn’t competition dancing, but appears to be someone getting her “groove on,” so to speak.
Originality: Mjin gives her a 3/10 because “it doesn’t look especially well thought-out . . . it’s simply all the steps she knows.” Again, this is not a choreographed broadway number. This seems so irrelevant to whether someone “can dance” in the lower-case d sense.
What is this supposed to mean? She’s not singing or playing the oboe, she’s dancing. What does musicality have to do with it?
I’m not reading anyone’s mind. I am arriving at an opinion based on context.
When you hear someon criticizing this girl’s dancing with words like “choreographed” and “plan” you can’t help but shake your head. A bad dancer is any one of a number of rythymless boobs side-stepping at a wedding. This girl has cool, poise and a quality that distinguishes her from that lot. Is she gonna be strapping on nude pumps and hitting the ballroom circuit? Probably not. Doesn’t mean she’s a bad dancer.
Someone criticizes a Jackson Pollock because it’s not representational or a Picasso because the proportion is skewed and therefore doesn’t look like a Rembrandt and I’ll tell them they’ve missed the point.
Agreed. It was awesome. There is a big ass middle between that performance and being a “bad dancer.”
When someone asks me is so-and-so a good/bad dancer, I do not approach the question as if my answer will determine whether she quits her job and pursues a careeer on broadway. I am thinking: How does she move vis-a-vis the music? Is their a purpose to her movement? Does it look “cool.” This girl is not bad. She’s ok. A little cool even. If she were bad, I don; think it would be for the reasons a lot of people are putting forth.
BTW; I don; think this chick is the dance equivalent of Jackson Pollock. I was making a point about judging art by set criteria. I maintain she was, at least partly, goofing.
Are you really asking what musicality has to do with dancing to music?
Generally, not always, but generally the qualities of the music has some impact on the dancing. Sometimes the dancing goes with the music, sometimes it fights against it, sometimes it succumbs to it, sometimes it overpowers it.
She seems blissfully unaware that the music has any qualities, other than the beat which she can’t seem to find consistently. She has no sensitivity to the music.
If those are your three questions, my answers are “not well, no, and no.”
Note that the OP was: “Is this woman a good dancer”?
This is not the same as “ok” or “a little cool even”.
Most of the people who’ve responded on this thread, and all of the people who’ve left detailed comments, have held back on necessarily saying she’s “bad”. We’re saying she’s “not good” because her timing is off and the whole thing doesn’t hang together.
And as for the Jackson Pollock analogies and such: I already alluded that she might be goofing around or whatever. But a good dancer goofing around is entertaining (e.g. like the first 30 seconds of this). This lady didn’t entertain me, nor most of the other respondents on this thread.
That woman is an awful dancer, i don’t get the napoleon dynamite comparisons though. The whole point of the dance number in that movie was that he was surprisingly INCREDIBLY GOOD, there was nothing bad or “so bad its good” about it.
But all you’re saying is that people who say she’s bad just don’t get it. That saying she’s a bad dancer is like saying Picasso or Pollock aren’t good artists because we’re looking at different criteria. But can you explain what makes you look at her and see someone good? I don’t think you’ve yet done that…
No, she isn’t a good dancer. Either the sound and video aren’t in sync, or she’s got no sense of rhythm. I also had a hard time even seeing her - black clothes against a black curtain in a poor quality video means that most of the time, all I saw was her face and her shoes.
Is she a bad dancer? I’d have to see more of her “work” to make that determination, but in this particular video, she dances badly. In my opinion. Which is mine.
Quite a few posters here have explained how they made their judgments, and all seemed to be using a perfectly reasonable set of criteria. You, on the other hand, have merely asserted that this woman is a good dancer and insulted everyone who disagrees with you. You haven’t given any reason why we should consider this woman a good dancer. This may come as a shock to you, but “Because I’m totally awesome and I said so, losers” isn’t really a reason.
Oh, no, wait, you did finally provide some explanation:
Yes, those are clearly the most important things to consider when evaluating a dance performance. How could we have missed it? I mean, her actual dancing ability isn’t much, but she has “a quality”. :rolleyes:
I think the phrase you were searching for was “and she’s kinda hot”, which I would agree with, but that doesn’t help her dancing. She’s awkward and boring to watch. She seems to be demonstrating every dance move she knows in random order. (It’s not merely that she’s not synced with the music; I checked and it still looks that way even with the sound off.) There’s also nothing special about her ability to execute these moves. As I said before, she looks like someone dancing around in their bedroom. This might be fun for her, but that’s really the only thing to be said in support of her dancing.
Perhaps, as you say, she wasn’t trying to dance well. If that’s the case, she succeeded. She’s managed to look exactly like someone with mediocre dance skills who isn’t putting forth much effort. If she were truly horrible that might at least be entertaining, but instead she’s just good enough to be dull.
What does this have to do with sincerity or being a hipster? It seems like a musical theater practice to me. There is a huge difference between straight up dancing and dancing as ‘movement’.
I don’t think that she’s actually dancing to the song that’s playing. I think the song is poorly synched to the video. What you think is bad dancing from her is actually bad editing.
Anyway, this video is better as a rorschach of people’s minds than it is a judgement of her dancing. We simply do not know what the context is, and we have people assuming that it’s some kind of ‘hipster’ thing. Hipster I guess in that anyone who would be into musical theater is a hipster. And insincere in that every actor/actress is insincere by profession.
I stick by my original assessment. The vast majority of responders to this thread are not able to judge something outside of their own personal aesthetic preferences. They don’t know how to judge movement and see whether or not the person has good movement. In this case all you have to do is watch the hips. And also, people are convinced, absolutely convinced that she’s actually dancing to the song they are hearing. It seems pretty clear to me that the audio track isn’t synched to the video properly.
This is just so obvious to me. I can’t believe people can’t understand that this video is EDITED, and there is not ROOM REVERB on the song so it is OBVIOUSLY edited in. You can tell because it’s separate camera angles, that’s your first clue. That room would have pretty obvious reverb. A big open cold room.
The song would actually be very easy to dance to, it’s a standard break-beat.
So yeah, my verdict is people who have no idea how to assess what they are looking at being judgmental, and a shitty video editor.
Mind you, I am not saying she’s a ‘great’ dancer, but she’s not terrible. It’s part of a theater act that none of you have any context for.
The interesting thing about this thread, is that those that think she’s not a good dancer have given their opinion, given arguments to support their opinion, and left it at that.
But those that think she’s a good dancer (or “not terrible”, which is not what the OP asked) have pretty much based their whole arguments on attacking the other side.
btw in my summing up I considered that the music may not be what she’s dancing to, and that she may be messing around, but still gave reasons why I don’t think she’s a good dancer.
Well, so far all whole bean has said is that people who don’t think she’s good don’t get it because we’re square and think So You Think You Can Dance is good dancing.
Oh, I hadn’t noticed that I managed to be influenced by a television program I have never seen. I thought my opinion of her dancing was poor because looking at it was painful and made me grimace.
