Saturday, November 26, 2011

Tut tut it looks like...dancing?

Tutting is a form of interpretive dance based on imitating the shapes of ancient egyptian heiroglyphics. The dance focuses on synchronized, robotic movements and is named after the egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. The dance can involve poses of the entire body or simply the fingers. It combines elements of "roboting"--starting and finishing moves on a dimestop to appear animatronic, "popping"--quickly contracting and relaxing muscles to cause jerks in the dancer's body, "boxing"--creating and manipulating box-like or rectangular shapes with the hands and arms, and "liquiding"--making the joints appear as hinges that can be manipulated by other body parts during a dance sequence. The illusion of creating a hinge or a shape are an application of a concept mimes use called "fixed point"--imagine how a mime keeps the appearance of an invisible wall or a rope by always keeping one hand on it. "Tutters" create the illusion of a shape in the same manner during a dance--by always maintaining at least one side of the shape, assembling it, and disassembling it as part of the dance.
One of the most well-known dancers of this style in the hip-hop world is known as Mr. Wiggles. Here is a video of him dancing:

This is just a samsung commercial, but it's a cool example of finger tutting.

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