Video of the Week: Open Mike Eagle “A History of Modern Dance”

A couple years ago I was forced to revisit Spike Lee’s School Daze as a part of a feature series on the director. I don’t know if you’ve seen it but it’s a pretty bizarre work, even from a director who gets pigeonholed for his gritty realism despite the fact that he has made a number of questionable stylistic diversions over the years (Bamboozled, anyone?). The plot centers around two groups of black students warring over the future of black America. It is also a musical, and is primarily remembered for a hit song about butts that was meant to be the film’s own “Shout.”

I bring all this up because Open Mike Eagle’s “A History of Modern Dance” seems to come from the same claustrophobic intellectual awkwardness as School Daze, but in a more intentionally humorous way. With its wailing siren sample and the way OME’s delivery somehow exists outside and around the beat, “A History of Modern Dance” is essentially an anti-dance track that happens to have resulted in a video where everyone moves like extras in “Da Butt.” OME’s lyrics riff on dance lingo of the past and present, his delivery breathless and timid as he fantasizes about “cutting up a rug” before wondering if the moment was ruined from something he said. The implication is that a scholar of “A History of Modern Dance” operates best in isolation, where after he has “been doing that research” he can recognize moves from afar, outright demanding no one get too close. School Daze only took dance detours and it existed before YouTube, so its meta-elements skew towards music as a comment on the film’s battle between primal aggression and intellectual distance, but Open Mike Eagle is able to make the internet video format a perfect complement to his commentary– he’s the only one in the video who never appears to have much fun, which makes sense given his admission that he’s spent hours watching other people move. And what’s more intellectually disconnected than a day devoted to studying awkward YouTube dance videos?

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Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Loser City as well as Ovrld, where he contributes music reviews and writes a column on undiscovered Austin bands.  You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with Dylan Garsee on twitter: @Nick_Hanover