Article September 22, 2008 Issue

A NEW MODEL FOR WORLD RESOURCE EXPANSION

BY CHANNING WALKER

As it begins, a big, lanky guy in shorts and a tee shirt—his face momentarily filling much of the screen—points behind himself to the narrow street bustling with foot traffic. He says to someone just off camera, "Point it that way, OK ... hold it steady." As the opening chords of a haunting song start to build, he steps into the street. Then, face to the camera, he launches into a cheerfully corny jig with knees pumping and arms rocking. The location is Mumbai, India.

The video, which surfaced on YouTube earlier this summer and instantly became an enormous hit, is titled "Dancing." And that's all there is to it—an uninhibited guy performing a goofy dance with Chaplinesque abandon. As the four-and-a-half minute video unreels, the "dancer," Matt Harding, shows up in 42 different countries. He's before a pyramid in Teotihuacan, Mexico; in the middle of a tulip field in Lisse, Netherlands; silhouetted by a geyser in Seljalandsfoss, Iceland; getting soaked by a rain storm in Stone Town, Zanzibar; along a remote mountain road in Ala-Archa Gorge, Kyrgyzstan; beneath the sea in Vava'u, Tonga; flailing weightlessly in the zero gravity of the Nellis Airspace in Nevada.

Sometimes he's dancing alone, no one else in sight. But what makes the video so winning are the sequences where others join in—from shoeless street children in Chakachino, Zambia, to fully costumed bushmen in Poria, Papua New Guinea. Free spirits from just about everywhere strut, sway, and bob along in imitation of Mr. Harding, and in total abandon. The sheer joy is so contagious and multiplies so rapidly that it is impossible, at least for me, to watch the video without growing happier.

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