Dancer Spotlight: Mike effin Song!

So I get obsessed not only with certain dances....but certain dancers. You know when you should be sleeping but you can't stop looking at different youtube footage of one particular dancer or routine? Yeah. I have that problem all the time. Right now the top things on my dance radar are...Mike Song...and Mike Song tutting.

Mike Song is a dancer. If you watched Americas Best Dance Crew Season 1, he was in the group Kaba Modern. They got third place.

Mike Song has the best body isolation's in popping I've ever seen. It really seems like every part of his body is a completely separate entity from whatever its attached too. Please watch this video and see if you agree. I apologize in advance for the screaming girls in the video...the mans got fans alright.



Now. If you were paying attention you saw some ridiculous isolation's, amazing musicality(i mean...he basically played off of every beat and bell in the song), and some sick tutting. This also was not a freestyle...it was a routine...from a class he taught. Which of course means that we all, in theory, should be able to learn how to do this. Yep.

Speaking of tutting. Its awesome and something that I have not been able to achieve AT ALL. Urbandictionary.com gives this definition of what tutting is in case you were a little unsure.

TUTTING:
The style was originally practiced by young funk dancers and is derived from the positions people were drawn in the days of the Ancient Egyptians. It is these positions seen in these portraits that have been adopted by dancers today. So when you "tut" you change the angles of your arms according to the beat. Those who are more experienced pop when changing from angle to angle thus refining the style. Tutting is still a greatly respected move and King Tut aka Mark Benson is widely acclaimed for pioneering the style.

My hands refuse to bend at a 90 degree angle to my arm. Mikes hands have no problems with it.
Here is a vid of him doing a tutting routine...music provided by Nintendos Wii.



It was good wasn't it? You'll watch it a few times...because its THAT GOOD. His precision, humor, and basically just mad skills has him on my mind alot lately. Go to youtube and check out more of this stuff. They are all great. Note...it WILL keep you up at night so try to start at a reasonable time.

There are also several tutorials on tutting that I'm going to try out. Some could be good....some could be disastrous. I'll let you know which ones are worth watching so that we may all get our tut on and strive to be like Mike.

And last but not least...I would like to show you a video of Mike Songs routine that he choreographed for the Urban Legends workshop. Mike is in the first group doing the routine, front and center. He also does the routine again solo at around 1:44 with bonus tutting at the end. It is a complex, precise, killer routine and I salute all of the dancers that attempted it...and mad props to the ones who actually pulled it off! For real...I could watch this all day.