Can’t someone post a fun video of a church wedding without generating a storm of controversy?
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:
I like it. But I was surprised to find that some people apparently believe the moves were spontaneous, and that the wedding party just decided out of nowhere that they would all dance down the aisle. The entire wedding party worked with a choreographer for quite some time, of course, to develop the sequences, the moves, and positions. The somersault by the bridegroom, for example, required a fair bit of precise timing and practiced coordination.
That, to me, does not diminish the pleasure of watching it one whit. It looks to me as if there was an effort to find out what each person could do and then work with him or her to develop the entire “dance” from start to finish. There are tricks and flourishes that could only have come from training and experience. The moves are too clever and sophisticated to have come from the members of a randomly assembled group like a wedding party– unless that group included a choreographer.
Nobody is trying to fool anybody.
I’ve seen a few comments about the dance moves being clumsy or lacking in gracefulness. Did these viewers forget that this was a real wedding party, not a dance troupe? Or did they just confuse some modern Bob Fosse type moves (especially the slow-motion effect near the end) with obtuseness? Considering the fact that the people in the wedding party were probably chosen because they were friends or relatives of the couple getting married, I thought they did very well. You could tell some were more comfortable with basic movements, and others– like the short guy with the beard– had some real skills. There are also moments that seem linked to the lyrics in a subtle, suggestive way– as when Chris Brown promises he’ll never let her fall and the dancers go into that slow motion tableau, or when the two girls pull each other like slingshots down the aisle.
Yet others have found fault with the idea of doing a celebratory dance during what– they allege– should be a “solemn” occasion. For heaven’s sake, they are celebrating a wedding in a church. They are happy: two individuals found lifetime partners. Their friends are joyfully celebrating with them. Someone else smartly quoted Mencken (I paraphrase): puritans are people who suspect that someone somewhere is having fun. If Jesus had attended this wedding, I think he would have gladly boogied down the aisle along with the wedding party. The Pharisees would have stared solemnly from the side, frowning.
By the late 1970’s, the tradition of the father walking his daughter down the aisle to “give her away” almost seemed to be going extinct. Well, it’s back with a vengeance. Why? Why on earth is a young woman not offended by the very idea? I don’t buy the idea that it’s a meaningless vestige of age-old traditions. I does mean something.
