Oh, There the hell is Matt.
Over 10 years ago, a guy named Matt quit his job to wander the world and he started making videos of him doing his silly dance. Everywhere, in dozens of different countries. The video went insanely viral. Then he got sponsored to travel the world and do it again. And again.
Today he was in Orlando, where lots of people gathered at Lake Eola to dance badly with him for the hell of it. Also to raise money; he had buttons and stickers for sale and half the proceeds went to OneOrlando.
And yes, I danced. Horribly. In such a way that trained EMT personnel, had any been around, would have rushed over right away. But it was fun anyway.
We got there an hour early, and by 10 till various brightly dressed people were wandering about, never realizing that the “Where the hell is Matt?” question was so literal… Right at 11 he showed up, dragging rolling luggage.
Matt Harding is very tall, you notice that right off, and he’s pretty much what you’d expect from someone who spends his time traveling to different countries and doing a silly dance on them. He’s friendly, apparently delighted to meet everyone he sees, and he has this down to a routine.
“I’ll play some music so you have a beat, but I want you to do your own dance,” he told us. “I used to teach my dance (he did a few steps of his famous jig, to general laughter), no one wants to do my dance. I’ll do my dance, you do your dance.”
We gathered out in the sun on a little peninsula jutting out into the lake and he arranged everyone so they were spread out with room to dance and in the camera’s view. The audience was a mix, young and old, many people in OrlandoStrong t-shirts or pride shirts, several in rainbow tutus or scarves or wild headgear. The camera was his phone, on a tall tripod, with a volunteer manning it. He set up a speaker attached to an iPod Nano which played a beat, got in the middle, and got us clapping.
On his call, we started dancing about — and laughing, immediately — and kept going until he yelled out “3, 2 1!” and we all stopped and did jazz hands. That was the warmup.
Did you know if you dance all out in direct sunlight on day in the 90s with high humidity, you get winded really, really fast? Or maybe that was just me.
Then it was live, and we gave it our all, dancing and leaping and throwing arms in the air and generally looking ridiculous and having a ball. We danced freestyle, then he had us rolling our arms and pumping our fists in a pattern, and finally ending with jazz hands. No idea what will end up in the final video.
Afterwards he hung around and took pictures and video with anyone who wanted to, which was just about everyone. He also sold and autographed stickers and magnets with his “Where the Hell is Matt?” logo, and said that half of his proceeds would go to the OneOrlando fund.
“Thank you for doing something so monumentally silly for so many years,” I told him.
“It’s a strange job,” he said. “But there’s lots of strange jobs out there, I’m realizing.”
“At least yours gives you excellent calves.”
(laughing) “I get my cardio on dancing days.”
This post just crossed my RSS feed.
Lucky you! I’ve always wanted to do this!