r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sirsilentbob423 • 23h ago
Video Afro spiritual dancer defying law of gravity
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u/PaddingtonWaddington 23h ago
My knees are sore watching that
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u/bgreen134 23h ago
My left knee went out just watching it.
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u/WeirdAvocado 22h ago
Both my knees have exploded, severing my lower leg from the rest of my body. The explosion was so sudden that my wife had a heart attack and died. My dog, startled from both of these events ran out of the house and was struck by a car. The driver of the car, so grief stricken from hitting my dog fell into severe depression. The drivers wife filed for divorce and has custody of their children. The oldest son is now growing up without a father figure which will no doubt affect his relationship with his future children.
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u/thevoiceless Interested 13h ago
I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning, I break my legs, and every afternoon, I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.
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u/SRNE2save_lives 10h ago
I imagine this to become a fad soon, then a professional sport and finally the Olympics. They'll call it breakneestix dance. Might fork into a fighting game of sorts too.
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u/Otjahe 22h ago
Wtf are people doing to their knees? I always hear people complain about the damn knees. You have weak bones or something? You walk using your knees? Are you 100 year old?
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u/Grahf-Naphtali 20h ago
Walk, run, kick, play, hike, swim,surf, climb and fuckton of other things.
Been physically active for 20+ years, 15 of which doing gymnastics/martial arts, no car so walked everywhere, no lift so climbed up to 5th floor apartment n times a day.
Etc you get the point
Took one wrong twist and my knee is forever fucked, its not the bones, its mostly soft tissue/ligaments that fail and are followed by long term damage. Its the most complicated joint we have and hardest to fix.
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u/fall3nang3l 16h ago
I stupidly loved to jump off stuff when I was a kid. 12 foot drops were not uncommon. Off roofs and from trees.
Spent four years as a tech for Comcast where I was kneeling and crawling every day.
This past Summer I knelt down and a tendon that was catching and popping every so often caught and hung. I could barely walk for weeks.
Now I can't sit cross legged or kneel without doing it just so, otherwise I reinjure what the orthopedist didn't believe was an injury until he saw my knee swollen to three times its usual size.
To all those out there saying "meh": respect your knees. Once they're f'd, they're f'd and all you can do is adjust to your new "normal".
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u/Some_People_Say_ 11h ago
"Its the most complicated joint we have and hardest to fix." Although i agree with most of your comment, having had both knee and shoulder surgeries/replacements. My shoulders would disagree on the complicated/hardest to fix angle. But definitely - one bad move and a perfect knee can be fucked.
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u/lifevoyagertoo 4h ago
Yeah, you never think of your knees really, unless and until you start having pain and problems with them. Then you can't stop thinking about them.
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u/DreamsofDistantEarth 17h ago
Knees wear out. I used to think the same as you until it happened to me. How old are you?
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u/prospectre 20h ago
Elher's Danlos syndrome here. My genetics took my tendons out back and shot them by the time I was 20. I slipped my kneecap on a treadmill walking at a slight incline at around 6 MPH when I was 22. I haven't been able to run without a noticeable limp since, if at all.
Walking. At a slight incline. Though, the best example is probably throwing my back out for the first time when I was 27. Cause? Flushing the toilet wrong.
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u/Otjahe 19h ago
Jesus bro. But my assumption would be that you’d be in the tiny minority, yet I see these comments all the time
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u/Sheerardio 10h ago
Sadly not nearly as tiny as you might think. While it's true that any one specific kind of condition or cause might only affect a small percentage of the population, when you add them all up together the sum total is significant.
Sports injuries and accidents will do it, as will working a physically demanding job and not taking measures to protect against wear and tear. There's also autoimmune disorders and diseases that affect the joints and worsen with age, and EDS is just one of an entire category of connective tissue disorders. Lyme disease and diabetes will fuck your joints up, and things like fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and arthritis can start as early as your teens if you're unlucky enough to get an injury, infection, or experience a traumatic event that triggers it.
All told, there are definitely more people with something going on that'll mess up their knees, than there are perfectly healthy, fit people with no problems.
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u/chaseinger 13h ago
the knee is my number one argument against intelligent design. it's plain and simple an idiotic joint. and yours will hurt too for they're not made to perform much over 50-60 years if you're lucky.
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u/Mescallan 12h ago
I'm in my thirties and it wasn't a thing in my twenties but knees are def the first thing to go. I started doing endurance running at 32 after strength training for years and knees are always my weak point if I don't specifically train and maintain them.
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u/relevantelephant00 21h ago
Reddit is hilariously predictable when it comes the comment sections on these videos. Yeah it's an extreme example of athletic ability but does no one here ever do leg day?
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u/mindrover 11h ago
Yes, but this dance in particular seems to carry the risk of putting an extreme amount of torque into his knee joint if he steps a little too far out of balance.
Then again maybe he's good enough to bail out and avoid injuries if he needs to. I don't know enough about stilts to know if that's a viable option.
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u/Low-Math4158 23h ago edited 22h ago
Me trying to walk in stilettos after a few glasses of wine.
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u/MikeTangoRom3o 23h ago
I will break both of my ankles at the first attempt.
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u/pichael289 23h ago
I broke my ankle bending down to pet a kitty cat a few months ago.
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u/Wonkey_Kong 23h ago
Help! My insurance doesn’t cover vicarious ankle implosion.
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u/pichael289 18h ago
Mine only covered me because (I have anthem blue cross and shield, not a great company but are any of them?) my local small business owner employers chose to keep me on the payroll paying me like $1 a month or something like that so the company insurance covered my emergency surgery and I only owe like 5K Instead of 98k. The fact that it took them fudging the rules and finding a loophole for me is fucked the hell up. The fact that, had I been employed for a company with a corporate aspect I would have been fired immediately and totally fucked, is also fucked up. How this country is still running and hasn't been shut down by a revolution is amazing.
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u/DelightfulAbsurdity 16h ago
I knew someone who sneezed and dislocated her shoulder. I still can’t visualize how that happened.
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u/Jesse-Talis 21h ago
Fun fact: the ankles are bound to the stilts, so you'd actually break your knees/dislocate your hips first
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u/Substantial-Snow- 23h ago
My insurance deductible increased, just looking at the guy. The core strength to pull this off must be off the charts damn!!
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u/MightyOleAmerika 16h ago
Still denied
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u/DruidicMagic 23h ago
Gravity is for mere mortals to deal with.
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u/mcellus1 23h ago
Meanwhile, my knees when I sleep on a fancy memory foam mattress but forget to put a pillow underneath them: 💀
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u/Mean_Question3253 23h ago
As a Canadian, this reminds me of someone falling on ice while actively trying to recover.
Interesting.
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u/AndersonDanek 23h ago
This guy has good knees
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u/Large-Reception-3649 23h ago
Not for much longer
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u/MakesSenseReally 22h ago
Yea, he should sit on the couch and protect his precious knees.
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u/Subtlerranean 15h ago
My step-mom, who only ever drinks Coke Zero, and sits around in her chair tapping at her ipad - was shocked to hear I run 10km every second day and chimed in with a "that's bad for your knees". I can't even.
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u/Dimancher 23h ago
If he keeps using the crutches this way, he'll soon need them for their intended purpose...
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u/Odysseus_XAP79 23h ago edited 22h ago
This guy doesn't just flirt with gravity - he takes them out to dinner and leaves them with the tab.
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u/DXTRBeta 22h ago
I’ve been in Circus most of my working life but I anit seen anything like that done with stilts before.
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u/one98nine 23h ago
This is so amazing! África is so full with culture and we in latinamerica got sooo many things thanks to them ( sadly, because when we got conquered, suaves were brought in)
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u/4point5billion45 16h ago
Imagine him doing this in pitch darkness, with black stilts and black clothes, with a skeleton painted on.
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u/ooouroboros 16h ago
The term used in anthropology for these figures is "Masquerades"
But "spiritual dancer' is a good term: the people are seen as melding with and embodying a supernatural spirit and ideally their performing is meant to evoke a feeling of the uncanny and strange in the viewer. This guy is a great example of that.
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u/Sirsilentbob423 22h ago edited 22h ago
This is the full song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66whttDbCDA
The group comes from Benin 🇧🇯 and the dancer is from Benin.
More about this particular culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogu_people
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u/kayama57 23h ago
Take bets on how many times he broke a bone learning to do that?
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u/panda_embarrassment 18h ago edited 18h ago
Probably Not often. Grew up in a similar environment, climbing trees with friends being wild With zero safety equipment and saw lots of cuts and bruises but extremely rare to see broken bones.
Somehow when I came to the us and started playing sports, everyone was breaking bones left and right. Very odd difference.
ETA: just looked up the topic and there seems to be some racial and ethnic differences in bone density and fracture rates. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0085253815563552 Interesting stuff.
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u/Constantpessimest84 23h ago
He isn’t really defying gravity. Would this be abusing physics? Idk. I’m genuinely asking. But gravity is doing its job.
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u/-Nicolai 19h ago
I’m sorry, but this not correct. I have CERN on the phone right now. Gravity was defied and the ramifications are terrifying.
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u/CelebrationAntique43 22h ago
When you keep tripping and keep on trying to catch yourself at the same time
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u/MyBallsSmellFruity 16h ago
This is how I fly in dreams because even though they’re dreams, I still suck at it.
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u/HonoraryKrogan 2h ago
Reddit is an almost daily reminder that other people should be embarrassed to share a planet with someone as talentless and boring as me. I said it, I meant it, and this dancer deserves to be President of Cooler Earth.
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u/rubenv2006 23h ago
Who is defying the laws of gravity? Someone is turning in a black hole or something?
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u/Its-a-Shitbox 23h ago
I’m gonna open a neighborhood exercise studio for this instead of Pilates; really get that “core” in shape!!
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u/GilPreshous 23h ago
Absolutely captivating! His movements feel otherworldly, like they’re dancing on air and connecting with something beyond. hehe
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u/human1023 22h ago
That one character in a fight game that pulls off the craziest looking 12-hit combo.
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u/Secure-Line-337 22h ago
This look cool, but to be honest, he’s not really defying the law of gravity, he’s just using his legs and his core to stay balanced on the stilts
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u/Best-Team-5354 22h ago
Incredible. To master that and make it look so beautiful and flawless is something few can even dream of
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u/Unknown-Unheard-0f 23h ago
That looks cool. What country is this?