What Dance is This?

"Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud [Official Video]" is a YouTube sensation with over 1 billion views and counting. You can watch it by clicking here.

According to Wikipedia: "The video was released on 8 October 2014. After first 24 hours, the video had over 2.7 million views on video-sharing website, YouTube. As of January 2017, it has over 1.46 billion views, making it the 20th most viewed video on the site.The music video received four nominations at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year and Best Male Video."

In this video, Ed Sheeran teamed up with Brittany Cherry in a captivating dance routine with his song, "Thinking Out Loud", playing in the background. Kudos to Sheeran for passing off as a professional dancer with the stamina, poise and seemingly effortless agility, and to Cherry for her sleek masterclass dance moves.

Their synergy has produced something that neither of them could not have achieved on their own. Sheeran is great as a singer and his other videos such as "The A-Team", "Photograph" and "Lego House" are popular on YouTube, but a far cry from "Thinking Out Loud".

As for Cherry, she is an accomplished professional dancer and was a contestant on season 10 of So You Think You Can Dance. Her performance in this video with Sheeran is a standout from her various dance clips on YouTube.

Apart from Sheeran and Cherry (and their 5 hours a day for 3 weeks of practice), there are many other factors which contributed to the huge success of this video such as: the lyrics of the song; the soulful music with influences of rhythm and blues; the location at the Crystal Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles; and the directors, Murray Cummings & Jason Koenig.

I think the winning edge of this video is the choreography by Emmy-winners Tabitha & Napoleon D'umo (aka "Nappytabs") and the training help from Paul Karmiryan. Their inputs had made this dance routine so sublime as to resonate with the romantic ballad -- making the dance and music intertwined as one.

The dance made sense to me as it flows seamlessly with the music-and-song. There was nary a dichotomy between the two. I think what has happened here is that we can, like what George Balanchine had said, “See the music, hear the dance.” 

Balanchine's further illuminations include: 

“Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.” 

“The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.” 

My conclusion is that we are actually enjoying this video in 4-dimensions with music-and-song that we can both hear and see, and dance that we can both see and hear, and we (millions of us I would think) are thus engaged from the start to the end. The dance has mirrored the music-and-song, and vice versa.

So, what dance is this? Some say its Rumba ballroom dancing. I think its Rumba with the influences of a refined "L'Apache" -- a stylish Parisian street dance. 

Please click here to watch a raw French Apache dance with moves such as the acrobatic flip over-the-shoulder adapted in Thinking Out Loud. 

Afterthought

Many a dance routine has left me befuddled with why I didn't get it. I feel better now as I can 'blame' it on the sub-par choreography. 

Watching "Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud [Official Video]" has been an education for me on a dance that works.