EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
04.06.12 - 12:30 PM
Putin On the Ritz
In Moscow, a few days before the Russian election, an exuberant crowd - including a couple getting married - put on the coolest, hugest, most joyous flash mob you've ever seen to the tune of "Puttin' On the Ritz" - in the snow, yet. A tentative online consensus thinks they're protesting Putin; either way, they're fabulous.
“Dressed up like a million dollar trooper/Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper.”
Comments are closed
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
40 Comments so far
Show AllWOW !
Uplifting to say the least. Thanks for that Russia.
OWS could use a few of those flash mobs. I am still grinning!
Yeah, it could be called the Occupy Dance Bloc, and instead of a
show down, there would be a ho down. Instead of a confrontation,
there would be celebration. A celebration of the joy of all folks getting together and puttin on a show for what is good and what is right.
Right for everybody involved. And the Earth and the rest of life too.
We could all start doing the Justice Jig together.
Peace on Earth and to all Humankind!
A REAL upper ~ great job!
That was fantastic and so uplifting!! Yup, that's what we need to survive these days in this world that has lost its way! Thanks, Russia!
Brilliant!!!
Fantastic!
Москвичи - Вы потрясающе красивая! Объятия из США!!!!
(спасибо Google Translate)
Muscovites - you are stunningly beautiful!! Hugs from the USA!!!!
This made me smile.
"Irina: . . . if only we can go to Moscow."
:-D (Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters")
Kudos! Very nicely done!
And some say it was a protest against Putin? Excuse me for chuckling but that's a bit much...it stretches credulity. It's a 'good feel' demonstration of talent. If it's a protest against Putin, then it's misplaced coz Putin comes away with a 'good feel'...
A 'tentative online consensus" indicates that those who say it's a 'protest' aren't too sure if it is. Why else use 'tentative'? By the way how did CD know that it was a 'tentative' consensus? How was that adjective arrived at? And by whom...? People online? Someone at CD...?
Thanks for showing us this! I guess I don't care too much if they're protesting or just celebrating. It sure brought me some good feelings and laughter...especially when the "soldiers" starting dancing. How often do we get to see this aspect of Russian humanity? Keep it comin'
Let's hear it for the human spirit. I'm basically pessimistic about the human race, but we can be marvelous!!!!
C'mon, George, we may not be perfect, but we ARE basically ALL good people inside, and we ARE a "good"
species. Of course, there's a down side to everything, including every person, but if we maintain hope and just keep looking for it, we WILL find the good that is always there just waiting to be found. Just look at these
"evil communists" (The Russians). Whoddua thunk? Don't believe all the lies and distortions being fed to us daily by the mainstrain media and culture, just meant to divide and conquer us and keep us cynical and down. That hope, that good, that OPTIMISM, is inside The Russians, it's inside the Arabs, inside the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, the Athiests, the Everyone. It's
inside me, and it's inside YOU. Just celebrate it, and spread it everywhere. Everybody. Join the dance. It could be fun....
" we may not be perfect, but we ARE basically ALL good people inside, and we ARE a "good" species."
Really? We are all innately good? Looking at the truly evil things we do to one another, to other species, to our planet, I just simply cannot accept that we, as a species, are innately good. What I can accept is that there are those among us who are "more good than evil".
At first I thought that this does not have anything to do with Putin, but someone in youtube comments mentioned that In the very end (around 5:15-5:20) the bride sings "Putin, moldets!" (Putin, well done!).
More fun than a barrel of Russkies.
Curious this banality ranks above any recognition of the passing of the iconic Gil Noble on the CD site. Though on 2nd thought, perhaps not.
Oh, come on Mr. Mean, turn that frown upside down. It can't always be doom and gloom.
That was bloody awesome!!!!
At first a glimpse of olive uniform made me cringe, but then the soldier dancing dudes made me smile all the more.
The people's soldiers invited to the dance. Enoble those!
I sent this to both my kids. What a joy!
From Russia With Love!
A tentative online consensus thinks they're protesting Putin"
Back it up or Shut it Up.
Awesome? -- hell yes! Looks like an elaborate, coolest, whole bunch of best friends wedding ceremony to me.How can you see it any other way?
Sorry anti-Putinites.
"RTH Network: ...... The Washington Post | ...Daily Telegraph"
The consensus coming from a newspaper connected to these two explains for me why they dreamed up the connection as being anti-Putin. Sorry I see nothing even close except lots of people doing something really fun and doing it SUPER.
'Zactly - how do you explain the wedding couple showing up in the middle of this event? I wish - if I was a kid (again) - and getting married. and a bunch of people would do that for me and her, how awesome would that be.
Those kids put a lot of work into this routine and it was KOOL!
You don't think the folks who put this on aren't capable of a good pun? I do. This thing was anything but spontaneous. It was choreographed, practiced (somewhat!) and professionally video-taped. It was also ambiguous, which is very Russian, and an absolute hoot.
I've been thinking about this video. I agree, that's it not anti-Putin--if anything, it is pro-Putin with the "Putin, molodetz" (Putin, well done!) line at the end.
I also wonder if it is really a "best friends" ceremony. Most of the dancers are young kids--much younger and from a different social world than the older, richer couple getting married.
The highly-organized nature of the performance and the professionalism of the video production suggests some good amount of money was spent making the whole thing happen.
Maybe it was organized and paid for by the rich couple alone, but perhaps Putin's campaign contributed as well. I'm just speculating, of course.
None of that necessarily detracts from the beautiful and fun-loving spirit of the dancers and onlookers, imo.
Trying to figure out why I find this so moving. It has nothing to do with political messages. I think it has to do with my having lived through the Cold War and knowing that for decades the Russians were treated as expendable by the West. Ever heard of Operation Sizzle and Operation Broiler? Early plans for preemptive nuclear strikes against Soviet cities...there would have been millions of deaths and probably most of the kids in this video would never have been born. We came close. When I see this celebration I celebrate these lives. May they flourish!
I grew up during the height of the Cold War. My mother was kind of a White Russian, only she wasn't. Her father was an artist and intellectual who left for the US in 1918. He was an early supporter of the Bolsheviks and wanted to return, but didn't.He supported the Soviet Union. He said anyone who wasn't Russian wasn't qualified to talk about Russia.He thought Doctor Zhivago was crap-and bad literature to boot. My mother was offered a job reading the news at Radio Liberty in the fifties, but turned it down flat.One of her best friends was an alcoholic ex-Czarist colonel who worked for the CIA (just like he was supposed to). Russians are hard to stuff into little boxes-like most people. They are complicated. Life is complicated. I'm glad to see that Russians can still be goofy, and silly, and political, and brilliant-all at the same time. So can Americans.
Lovely, happy way to start the day............no wonder the world's best dancers are from Russia.
And they are all so beautiful!
'Twas likely a bit anti-government - note the brooms sweeping clean and the people fake-cowering before the military - but it was in good spirit and just so much fun!
Another and likely other progressive web sites are showing the counter protests to these easily overshadow these. Shouldn't we allow for the fact that Western intelligence services serving Western power elites are behind this BS. That's what's happened historically. Are we being BSd into believeing in something that's just not true? Just questions to ponder! The skeptic's rule and all!
Yes, this video is very moving. It touched my heart and I also, am unsure why. Maybe it is the human spirit triumphant.
Is CD censoring comments?
The women, for me. The men too. Charming. My next wife has to be Russian.
In case anyone was wondering, at 3:25 or so , when the champagne is being poured, the people are chanting "gorka, gorka, gorka" (горько), which means "bitter". It's a traditional way to push the newylweds into a sweet kiss.
Amerika... you just bin served.
I LOVE this video!
"Whatever. They're Fabulous."
Whatever. You suck at writing.
Whatever. You suck at critiquing.
Whatever it is or was, it's fabulous!
The location of this was on the "wedding" overlook up at Moscow University so I suspect most of the participants were university students. Choreographed but still joyous.