July 17, 2007
Do You Do the HBO Dance?
Via the tipline and Sam of Leisure, we're reminded of the oddest D.C. ritual of the summer -- doing a little dance as soon as the old school HBO theme music comes on at the start of any Screen on the Green screening. Sam explains:
This is my third year coming to SOTG, but I had to have someone explain to me the concept of the HBO Dance. When the HBO music comes on, scores of men and women are compelled into a dervish that looks like an aerobics move, waving their hands above their head while hopping. Or a 20 second rave, where everyone is high on Franzia.We're not sure exactly when or how this got started, but we've certainly seen it happen. This video is pretty darkly lit and hard to make out, but you'll get the idea. Do you do the HBO Dance?
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i definitely saw people doing the HBO dance last year at "The Day The Earth Stood Still," and have yet to figure out *why.* anyone else have a theory as to the origins? glad to see strange [non-violent] traditions continuing in the district.
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If anyone's been to the park screenings in New York City, you'll recognize this tradition there, too. It's weird.
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The announcer introducing the screening one year said that the tradition started in NYC and migrated south. He seemed oddly vaguely contemptuous.
But don't resist it. Do the dance. Why we dance to the HBO theme but not to rock music is another question . . .
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I would say more than one-third of the crowd did the HBO dance last night. I had heard about it before but though it would a) be longer and b) be choreographed. Both assumptions were incorrect. (and by choreographed I mean, not people flailing around.)
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Last night was my first Screen on the Green experience. I was baffled by the HBO dance at first, but quickly joined in... it's strangely exhilarating. Why fight it?
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It definitely started in NYC. I've been going to SOTG since it started and the first time someone did the dance, I had a friend in from NYC. When they saw the dance (done by a group of about 5 people) they said "we do that in New York." The next week about 1/3 of the crowd did the dance. It's stuck ever since.
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I have been doing SOTG in DC since the first year and if I remember correctly, people would get up and dance to the tune...and it just picked up and spread.
Its also a great way to stretch before sitting on your butt for two plus hours
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you have to dance! it's great.
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you said that "you'll get the idea". sorry, i don't. can't see a damn thing or hear a damn thing either. and i didn't have HBO growing up, so you're going to have to explain this one a little better, sommer.
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"This video is pretty darkly lit and hard to make out, but you'll get the idea"
hard to make out, eh? try impossible to make out. i can't see a damn thing. guess i'll have to head out next monday to see for myself.
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Sorry you guys are having trouble with the video -- it's admittedly very dark, though I am able to see a group of people bouncing up and down with their arms waving in the air while this sort of early 1990s HBO theme music plays in the background.
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What's really interesting is that all the videos I could find of the dance from New York have people clapping, which I've never seen in at the D.C. SOTG.
Does DC finally have something we're actually superior at? (Clapping totally ruins the effect!)
For those who haven't been, the dance is pretty simple: Stand up, put your hands in the air and then wave them to the beat of the song while throwing your feet from side to side the other way.
It's kind of dancing like one might when they were a kid.
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Shit, I've been dancing to the HBO song, much in the method described above, since I was probably 5 years old, making that the mid-to-late 80s. I was totally ahead of the curve - up yours New York!
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Just talked to my mom - make that two years old :) Innovation ftw!
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back in 1985(ish) my dad and I used to hold hands and swing them and sort of "dance" to that theme song. I was probably 3 years old..... thanks for reminding me of our spontaneous tradition. I can imagine it would be just as fun to do today... :)
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I went to SOTG in DC back in 1999-2000 (back when it was under the Washington Monument) and there was no HBO wiggle dance. I moved to NYC in 2000 to 2002 and I can definitely attest to having seen it there in the summer of 2001. Not many people - maybe 100 scattered throughout the whole crowd - but it struck me as a very NYC thing to do. I've been back for 5 years and have seen it catch on in DC. So we didn't invent it, but we may have perfected it.
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I remember the HBO dance at SOTG in 1999. Not many did it, but those who did it got lotsa cheers.
By the third time I went to SOTG, I started running into lots of people I knew from various activities. It was then that I knew that DC had stopped being the city (near) where I lived and had become home.