That’s NOT How You Do The “Head Thing”

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never do that again please.JPG Dear Nidhi M.,

Thank you very much for sending Sepia Mutiny a story idea via our tipline three hours ago. It was so kind of you to think of us as you went about your day.

Since you have demonstrated your generosity already, I feel emboldened enough to wonder if you’d be willing to go a bit further in showing your devotion to this mutinous cause. Do you bleed Sepia? If so, would you graciously consider donating one of your eyes to me? I lost mine when I clawed them out, after watching the link you helpfully enclosed with the following succinct statement:

Nike teaming up with 24 hour fitness mixing and mucking up classical indian dances with bollywood and strange robotic aerobic moves.

Mein Gott, that’s almost poetic. You were right. And now, I am in so much pain because of it. I’d gouge away at the intern’s face, but she took one look at me and ran screaming to Rajni the lemur’s room. At least she didn’t have to watch Jamie King train three mostly wooden dancers in his “Rockstar workout” of “far-East funk”. Nor did she have to hear his priceless wisdom, which I feel I must contradict fervently after watching this entire fiasco:

There are no rules. If you’re feeling the music, you can’t go wrong.

TRUST me. You can indeed go wrong. Especially when you employ that uber-abused cliche which has appeared on browndating dot com so many times, my friends have turned it in to part of a drinking game (“OMG, he prefaced it with ‘good blend of’…DOUBLE SHOT!”).

Of course, I am referring to that bi-cultural, directional claptrap which automatically disqualified all otherwise-promising candidates from suitable debauchery; Mr. King’s spin on it didn’t prevent the gagging, not after what I saw. “East meets West on the dance floor”? Come to any random desi party and you can abuse “South” as well, i.e. “when East meets West on the dance floor, two rabidly horny underage hormones often move South in order to simulate an act which MummyPapa would spank them unconscious for, for even pondering”. Anyway. When this man who has choreographed Madge exhorts us to “just get out there and show your Bollywood style!”, I don’t think he realizes what fresh hell he is inviting the world to suffer through by doing so.

Chick Pea? Are you out there? Have you done your surgical rotation yet??? That faint, scratchy squawking you hear is Abhi, frantically paging you to the bunker’s painfully rustic OR. Go, scrub your hands already! My anesthesiologist Dr. Walker is already prepping me for surgery. As for the rest of you, just know this and remember it well– when you dance like that, you make the baby Jesus cry. Worse than that, you also piss off our Desidancer.

Blindly yours,

A N N A

:+:

(more pictures after the jump, click to enlarge them…if you dare)

81 thoughts on “That’s NOT How You Do The “Head Thing””

  3. Ismat– sorry! Try it now, the link should be fixed…but I really think your eyes are too nice for it. 😉

    See? It’s like my often mocked “soccer-Mom-arm”-move…I didn’t want my precious Mutineers to suffer, so I didn’t let you see it for yourselves…ah, I keed, I keed. (not really)

  4. Anna. Here’s a note expressing how truly I appreciate the funnies you bring us on midterm week. When I am cramming. And caffeinated yet sleepy. That sh!t woke my ass up!

  6. would you graciously consider donating one of your eyes to me?

    Good god, Anna, I’ve missed you.

  7. i dont know about you… but i just cant get over the buffness factor… man – those triceps are those quads are quite yum. very supple.

  8. As a person who, admittedly, is not a big fan of Bollywood musical segments, I found myself thinking, “Is this really any better or worse than what goes on in a Bollywood film?” The answer…an unqualified YES!!!! I’ve no problem at all with the dance moves, because, I really do think it’s not any worse that Bollywood (please don’t hunt me down DesiDancer). But, the costumes…ugly. As a musician, the torture my ears had to endure, horrible rapping combined with a sorry rhythm track, for nearly 4 minutes will leave permanent mental scars (especially the horrid “ta-ka-di-mi” vocalizations…OY!!!!). One point I would like to make is that it would be wrong for anyone to get offended because none of the “dancers” were desi. To do that would be akin to saying that desi folks should not be allowed to salsa or swing dance. I don’t think the ad is bad because it’s in poor taste, rather I think it’s bad as a result of poor (verrrrrry poor) execution.

  9. i jnew it… and i called it… just saw the video … that one can do splits… ohhhh… fan me rukmini.

  18. color me pissed.

    gah. My warm up has more grace and “Far East” style than this tripe. The fact that Jamie King’s intro over-uses the word Authentic immediately leads suspicious-me to infer that the choreography is probably anything BUT. Ooh, and i was right.

    As for the track, it sounds like MC Hard Kaur (of le Sona Family) though probably is a bad copycat. And incidentally, Nike people, if you’re talking about being buff and fit and girl power and all that marketing hype, why use a song with lyrics of “no soft drinks, just whiskeys-bacardis”? because a look at any uncle’s midsection will tell you what a whiskey-bacardi body looks like, and it ain’t something Nike would endorse. Though the lyric does sound like a “Glassy” lift…

    “if you’re proud that you’re brown, make some noise!” the only noise I’ve got for you was eloquently described by my girl Fuerza Dulce, in comment #12

    thanks for nothing, ANNA– I was just off to bed and now I’m guaranteed nightmares (instead of my usual dream where I’m Hrithik’s item girl) 😉

  22. Hey, I’m not a big fan of Bollywood plots,etc., but even if you don’t like the music I think everyone has to admit Indian actors and actresses can dance—and I bet they could dance the pants off of most western actors, even if they had to switch their idiom around. And it’s not just shake your ass dancing. It’s a little annoying that people equate Bollywood with bad quality in all dimensions. Multidimensional thinking people! Multidimensional!!

    would you graciously consider donating one of your eyes to me?

    Good god, Anna, I’ve missed you.

    Amen. But to prevent further eye damage, I’m restricitng myself to the craptastic photos. /runs for visine.

  25. ARGH! Makes me want to smack Jamie King till he cries, then smack him again. … Watching the video itself, I thought “Hmm, not bad — pretty decent hip-hop”. And then I heard what he had to say, and !!ARGH!! Far-east-funk-rockstar-workout my big Bharatnatyam-toned kundi.

  26. ‘paging dr. bean, paging dr. bean’……

    😉

    anna.. i am here now…at your service.

    (surgical rotations were done um..in medical school.. um…6 years ago…however i still go to the OR for surgical procedures.. )

    now who the hell is donating their eye? and abhi? you method of paging using smoke signals takes awhile to make it’s way down south hence the delay…

    dr. walker.. is anna ‘out’ yet? your method of just hitting her on the head with a few shots is semi-barbaric, but whatever… she’s out cold..and now we can do the eye transplant…

    where the hell is the eye? who’s the donating being? and did they also sign up for the bone marrow drive?

    i’m scrubbed in, prepped, gloved, and masked…um..that burger king hat will not suffice as a hairnet…sorry..i can be a pain 😉

    let the procedure begin…STAT! and heck if this doesn’t work…dr. walker.. and calgon…take me away!

  28. I had the sound off since I’m at work. Not as bad as everyone makes it sound. The moves aren’t anything worse than the indipop music videos.

  29. Saheli…

    If indians can dance and black people can dance, does that mean I can really dance? 🙂

  30. This reminds me of that old SNL sketch in which Tom Hanks drinks spoiled milk, sits on a splintered chair, etc., proclaims how awful it is and then encourages everyone else in the skit to do so themselves 🙂

    I too had to know just how bad this was, and so I cringed my way through a few of the clips. But as with the flimsy and gratuitously exoticicized desi oriented pop lit that we all love to hate, I feel that there’s an upside to this sort of corporate fueled tripe. However laughable and misguided and frivolous this Nike video is, I think it’s a sign that perhaps there is more room than ever in America for that which is ‘authentically’ desi. As in, more room for that which doesn’t need to broadcast itself as authentic.

    (Take the tandem and recent rise of documentary film and reality television – like the use of ‘authentic’ in the Nike video, ‘reality’ has little bearing on most of the shows in that genre. Yet reality tv has done so much to bust through the widely held notion that non-fiction + moving picture = b o r i n g. Lo, a whole new documentary going audience was born. And it was good. People who never would have gone to a free showing of a Maysles Brothers film even ten years ago will now pay $10 to see Spellbound, Mad Hot Ballroom and Capturing the Friedmans.)

    The Nike video will die an unheralded, dust covered death in the recesses of many a closet and basement (Tae Bo, anyone?). In the meanwhile, countless other forces are rapidly contributing to a more nuanced understanding of all things desi (including SM, yay!). For those among us with work and inspiration and aspirations rooted in the subcontinent, this sort of pabulum should also spur us to keep innovating and make something of more lasting value, cuz India ain’t just a moment, ya heard?

    In other words, Just Do It (lest Nike do it for us…)!

  31. The Nike video will die an unheralded, dust covered death in the recesses of many a closet and basement (Tae Bo, anyone?). In the meanwhile, countless other forces are rapidly contributing to a more nuanced understanding of all things desi (including SM, yay!). For those among us with work and inspiration and aspirations rooted in the subcontinent, this sort of pabulum should also spur us to keep innovating and make something of more lasting value, cuz India ain’t just a moment, ya heard? In other words, Just Do It (lest Nike do it for us…)!

    Ha! Who would’ve thunk the most inspiring thing I’ve read recently would come from this post?

  32. anna…

    um.. i don’t know if i can perform the surgery…

    one of my eyes is out too… i finally saw the bakwas that nike has on it’s site..

    ‘color me pissed’ desidancer?

    it’s color me livid…

    For those among us with work and inspiration and aspirations rooted in the subcontinent, this sort of pabulum should also spur us to keep innovating and make something of more lasting value, cuz India ain’t just a moment, ya heard?

    yeah after getting madonna’ized, gwen stefani’ized, and all that utter nonsense.. hmm.. i wonder what the japanese are feeling about the harsjuku girls and if they are as perturbed as i was…

    and nike… wtf? could you not do your homework.. i’m sure you have cadoodles of people in your staff to do background and learn more about what our moves are really like…you are adding pure insult to our fantastic dances which have been here longer than you can say lambada/macarena/electric slide COMBINED!

    um.. trying to capture in on the moment i guess.. and unfortunately the macacas are not fleeting moments…as allen is finding out 😉

  33. After all the Hindi movies I’ve had to suffer through this isn’t any worse then hearing the theme music from Dallas on a Hindi movie. There is probably about 300 bollywood movies produced with moves/sounds that are the same or worse…

  35. my students smoke this, yaar. 😉

    For those among us with work and inspiration and aspirations rooted in the subcontinent, this sort of pabulum should also spur us to keep innovating and make something of more lasting value, cuz India ain’t just a moment, ya heard?

    I’m seriously going to research the costs of creating my own damn series of Bollywood dance workout videos.

    And I’m not so sore about the MC Hard Kaur track being used because at least the rest of the world might learn that brown sistas can flow. (thanks for details, TrickMan)

  36. oh. you lot are just jealous of her really supple arms.

    i tried that move but it gets a little jiggly.

  38. Anna I missed you mostly because between the monkeys and all the other “boys” around here this place was fast turning into a big ego pot of machismo, flexing and all involved, and even some masculine women joined it. I MISSED YOU and your clean up crew abilities.

    OK this one had me just a slight bit traumatized and a slight bit laughing, though not as much as the midget break dancing that I didn’t realize was a “small person” till later.

    I predict this will go nowhere, I wish they had done a better job, do a “international” run thru the whole thing. A sensual belly dancer, then bust out some Bhangra dancers, a surd with some cool Nike’s would have been far sexier, a Geisha with Nike dancing shoes on.

    These women looks so serious and they look like someone that would kick my ass outside the mall!

  39. DD – that is an amazing video you linked to. I like how even some semi-bellydance moves are made totally masculine.

    And you should definitely make workout videos! Go, go!

  41. She’s kinda cute. Anyway, the track is definitely by Hard Kaur. They’re just dancing to it. I didn’t think it was that bad in an eye-gouging sort of way. Heh.

  42. DesiDancer,

    Jai, my dear, THIS is how it should be done.

    Ha ! That video really made me laugh (I’ve seen Lakshya — good movie). Thank you for putting a smile on my face, I needed that 😉

    Your Basement Jaxx link is so cute– awesome!

    It’s great isn’t it ? I absolutely love that song when combined with the video; surprisingly the two really go well together. Divya Dutta looks like she’s really enjoying herself too.

    JoaT,

    A sensual belly dancer, then bust out some Bhangra dancers, a surd with some cool Nike’s would have been far sexier,

    You mean like this ? (No “surds”, but sort-of bhangra).

    Or this (sardar in it, just for you. Good bhangra-rap collaboration).

    Or this (no sardar — apart from a quick shot of the “Kray Twinz” — but cool video. Good sampling of Khalnayak’s Choli Ke Peeche too).

  44. Far-east-funk-rockstar-workout my big Bharatnatyam-toned kundi.

    we need proof with that statement and then i can recommend bharatnatyam to every single girl who is just poking it out for attention

    Jai, my dear, THIS is how it should be done.

    another one that made Prabhudeva really famous. And DD i would def buy your video

  45. My warm up has more grace and “Far East” style than this tripe.

    LOL, at least they didn’t call it “Middle East.”

  47. PrabhuDeva definitely has talent. I use to work in a nightclub in Chennai that he use to frequent back in the day, and he would never dance. Just came in and stood around.

  49. DesiDancer,

    I’d cut off Jai’s left ear to be able to train with PrabhuDeva. 🙂

    Very funny 🙂

    When you get a chance, check out those other videos I linked to — at least the second two (the first is just Dus Bahane). They’re “Shoulder Surf” by Sukhshinder Shinda, and “Do That Dance” by Hunterz. The music’s good but they’ve also got some backing dancers in the vids who — I think — do the kind of stuff you’re interested in too.