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MA ADA 2009 > blogs > Dance on YouTube.

Dance on YouTube.

Feb 19, 06:49 PM · Rose Ruane

I’ve started to become increasingly fascinated by two types of dance, of which there are hundreds of videos on YouTube: ‘Jumpstyle’ which comes out of the European Happy Hardcore/Gabba scene and Japanese ‘ParaPara’ which is danced to Eurobeat.

I stumbled across them by accident, while researching different types of performance on YouTube, and was fascinated by them both as they seem to be mainly performed by young men who appear to be part of traditionaly masculine subcultures (although slightly more women appear to also perform Para Para.)

From what I have managed to find out so far, both of them are loosely tied to custom car culture and male dominated music genres.

It seems intriguing that they appear to feel that their masculinity is unthreatened by dance which has been an art form traditionaly eschewed by young, straight, working class males, and more than that, that it has a sportsman-like competitive element based around displaying the ability to dance at high speed utilising increasingly complex and athletic moves.

Those are just my initial observations about why this topic has grabbed my attention. I’d like to find out a lot more. In the meantime, below are links to the Wikipedia definitions of the genres and a couple of fairly representative videos.

Wikipedia definition of Jumpstyle

Wikipedia definition of Para Para

 

Comment

  1. Jumpstyle. I saw a some lads in a car park down in Castle Douglas doing this. There’s a kind of a highland dance thing going on here.

    — Paul Cosgrove · Feb 19, 09:18 PM · #

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