Dancing at the Pink Pony Club

A little bit about the process behind these dance compilations

I’ll be honest, I have been in a creative rut lately. It’s torturous to want to create things, make things or write things and have no motivation or inspiration. I’ve been at this game long enough to know how to handle these blocks. It’s simple. I go for very long walks along the river. (The Hudson or The East, depending on my mood, though the West Side Highway is absolutely plagued by content creators these days.)

On these walks I am listening to music. I’m not a podcast boy, hard as I tried. Every now and then there’s I’ll shuffle to a song that mentions, or vaguely alludes to dancing. This is when the creative funk lifts and I know the next few weeks will be spent poring over movie clips, attempting to choreograph a dance with dancers I don’t control. It’s torturous and nobody’s fault but my own, but the final results are always worth it. I watch these videos often, getting high on my own supply. But I love dance, movies and music. Sue me.

Over the years, I’ve learned so much about scoring and editing. (You can see my first one was…rudimentary at best.) The first step is surveying the massive folder of clips I have. I examine what’s been overused, underused or needs to be added. I find the beats per minute (BPM) of the song I’m using and see if I can match that to any of the clips I have. I convert that BPM to frames — knowing my cuts have 30 frames per second, I can calculate where and when a beat starts on a video timeline. This helps “choreograph” when a dancer should be tapping their foot, raising their arm, bopping their head, etc. It’s a lot of math but worth the payoff.

In one sitting, I can get through about 10 or 15 seconds of footage before I start to get frustrated. Finding the right clips takes forever. If Chappell Roan is singing about L.A., what clip makes the most sense? Clueless or perhaps La La Land? Whenever I make good progress, I show my wife the rough cut. She pulls no punches and points out holes, off-beats and oddities. (Her brutal criticism of all my creative work is one of the reasons we’re together. Don’t ask me why.) Then the whole thing repeats over and over. The final draft is worked to bits and I push myself to be as exacting as possible. It’s never perfect, nothing is. Like all creatives, the moment it is published, I find errors to fix. But once it’s out, it’s out. I’ll save the errors as callouts for the next time.

Years ago, the video I made for “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon took off. I love knowing that so many people have watched it, presumably because it brought them joy. (The ultimate aim of these videos.) I wonder if the musicians or actors, if they’re alive, ever see them. Do they like them? Do they think it’s theft? Do the choreographers see it as flattery? I wonder if actresses like Natalie Portman or Priyanka Chopra or Margaret Qualley watch them and wonder if they’re various on-screen dances will appear. (That is at best, odd and at worst, psychotic. Oh well.)

As for the creative panic that often induces these projects, I usually wind up on the other side feeling like I’ve run a gauntlet. And suddenly smaller projects seem more manageable. Such are the mysteries of the mind.

So anyway, all of this is to say I made this for you. I watch these videos when I’m feeling down and they tend to help a little bit. I hope they have the same effect on you. I have gathered all the ones I’ve made in a playlist here.

Until next time,

JJ