Dancing back into favour
Good on British Prime Minister Theresa May for sending herself up and busting some self-dep dance moves to kick off her keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference. Playing to a weakness rather than a strength must have gone against the grain for a seasoned politician constantly under pressure to keep up the mental fancy footwork needed to fight back against Wild Boar Boris and her many detractors.
May-bot is unreservedly unco and too hunched over to be a decent Dancing Queen, but she was willing to dig deep and tap into her well of nerd reserves.
One of the most cliched catch-cries of self-helpdom is to throw caution to the winds and get out, out, out of your comfort zone. May went to the very edge of that zone, and it worked, carrying her shimmy off with a beaming grin as she danced The Brexiteer with Abbacadabra tragic magic. And there was no shaking of the prime ministerial bottom or jiggling of the May mammaries to make her moves unbecoming of a woman of her station.
May-bot’s first foray into getting into the groove was when she tried, back in August, to dance with schoolchildren on the first day of a trade mission to Africa. It went viciously viral.
How brave of her then to rush back in with a heavy plod where angels fear to tread lightly. However, her effort was downright dainty when compared to the lumbering dance moves of Boris Johnson’s imitations of a stunned wildebeest when he has been filmed flinging it about.
The public has little appetite for seeing politicians performing spontaneous slither-overhere snake-hip wriggles, but when dancing is resorted to, we are highly critical. If only line dancing was back in fashion even the most wooden politician could pull that off.
Seeing our MPS walking along parliamentary corridors batting off journos, or standing still, stiff and upright surrounded by nodding flunkeys to do quickie Q&AS, has been the standard position.
Remember former prime minister Bill English when he was anointed the Samoan chiefly Leulua’iali’iotumua matai title in the village of Faleula? His attempt at a traditional siva Samoan dance, where he moved his clenched fists like rusty rotating pistons badly in need of an oil & grease, had us wincing back home.
So far the king of the Kiwi politician dance floor is surely former Labour MP Pete Hodgson, as seen when he, along with a handful of favoured MPS under the Helen Clark regime, all got down and dirty to the music of MC Hammer.
John Key was happy to oblige at gay days out to dance up on stage or mince along a catwalk, while ACT party leaders have led from the top and been all too willing to commit first degree murder on the dancefloor on Dancing with the Stars.
Rodney Hide moved as if his nether regions were swathed in adult nappies, and his speartackle dumping of his partner was in danger of resulting in the highest ACC claim of all time.
Politicians are under so much stress they could do with classes in interpretative dancing (so we might understand their ways) or free-form, possibly taught by Lorde, who always looks like she’s undergoing violent exorcism when she thrashes about on stage. Instead of extended full paid stress leave for Jami-lee Ross, perhaps he and his mentor, Crusher Collins, should undertake restorative classes of this nature.
These angry people think they are losers in a battle for our Kiwi identity. It’s like the chorus to some quaint 1950s rock tune.