ACDC vs. M&M: The Biggest Online Dance Battle in History

By: Laubaby



So for those of you who don’t already know there is currently an online dance battle going on between 2 crews and it is all made possible due to a thing that we call YouTube. But recently it has just been brought much attention because it has been made public on shows like Access Hollywood and Ellen. Now normally I wouldn’t go so far as to put effort in writing about a dance battle, being that I’m lazy and usually not interested enough to undertake such a task, but this particular one caught my attention and I think this would catch the attention of many of you YouTubers, Step – Up 2 fans, Hannah Montana fans, or maybe even just regular dance fans out there. The reason I’m so specific with the particular viewers who’d take interest in this battle is because this battle involves the stars of the Step – Up movies as well as Hannah Montana and takes place in the YouTube arena. But let me rewind and start back from the beginning.





THE CHALLENGE

On April 10, 2008 Jon M. Chu (director of Step – Up 2) and Adam G. Sevani (Step – Up 2 star a.k.a Moose) issued the following challenge to Miley Cyrus (star of Hannah Montana and singer) and her girl counterpart Mandy Jiroux from the Miley and Mandy show, an online series hosted on YouTube.



April 10, 2008 @ 5:00 pm, Los Angeles, CA
What: Biggest Online Battle Ever
Crew: Adam/Chu Dance Crew (ACDC)
Opponent: Miley and Mandy (M&M)

This video has currently racked up approximately 300,000 views on YouTube.

THE RESPONSE

On April 13, 2008 Miley and Mandy released their response video in this biggest online dance battle ever!



This video has currently racked up a little over 3,000,000 views on YouTube

THE ANALYSIS
Now that each crew has stepped it up lets have a breakdown of how the 1st round went shall we. I’ll be looking at each of the crews through several criteria: style/choreography, difficulty, and music.

Style/choreography:

Now what I love about ACDC’s video is that most of it is original work or dancing per se and a big reason for this is the fact that everyone in that video is just free styling. I would guess what Jon M. Chu did was have everyone gather in a dance studio and play the music in the background and let everyone do what they wanted. So we had free stylers that ranged from break dancers, poppers, krumpers, tutters, and ones that I’m not sure what the technical term is when it’s like a wave ripples through your body for example that 2nd scene with Adam Sevani where it goes from his legs to his chest to his legs again. It is because people were free styling and awesome moves were laid down I got the feel that it was a real street battle not to say there was no choreography in the video. I think there were 2 instances in which there could have been choreography and that is the part where Chu was scrolling along everyone’s feet and each person did a different move and the other instance is when they started the 2nd half with the daft punk song and all the guys were in a line with the guy turtling along the floor, I’m not sure if those were choreographed or what not but I thought that was pretty cool.

Now what I thought was creative about M&M’s video is the fact that they went with a music video theme. So with that theme I think that they basically choreographed everything, even the stuff that seemed like free style break dancing. Now I’m not knocking on the fact that everything was choreographed but I thought that that fact in combination with the whole group dancing idea decreased the feel of the video. It seemed like less of a street battle and more like an end scene of a movie or something. I thought that the moves that they brought to the battle were impressive, and they seemed to have more air stunts than ACDC had. I know that Miley and Mandy are not professional dancers like Adam and his friends are so I give them props for incorporating their own style and personality into the battle. For example the scene with the girls playing paddy cake or when Miley uses Mandy’s leg as a microphone was a good addition on their part. Oh and I thought it was interesting how M&M contrasted ACDC’s individualized personalities of dance by their group dancing and their matching wardrobes. Everyone in M&M’s video practically had the same color wardrobe. But I did think M&M put in a good twist at the end by having Channing Tatum dance with them, I was really blown away by that.

Difficulty
I think in terms of difficulty ACDC set the bar at a pretty high level. All the moves that were done in the video were diverse and required a lot of skill and practice way beforehand. The same goes for M&M’s crew. I’d say they either met the bar or I may go so far as to say that they pushed it higher with their video. All the moves that they put out there I’d have to say had a wide range of difficulty. The reason I worded it like that is because a lot of the difficult dancing that was done wasn’t really done by M&M themselves per se but rather by their dancers. Yes I know M&M opened up the battle in the beginning with their popping but I think that’s the hardest they’ve done in their video as opposed to Adam being more versatile in ACDC. Oh and I have to add, I could have sworn that those moves that Miley and Mandy did in the beginning are moves that I saw in a Darren Hanson dance instructional video on YouTube.

Music
I have to say Timbaland seems to be the general theme when it comes to this first round. Now I like the songs that were used in each of the crews’ videos. For ACDC, we first hear Flo – Rida feat. Timbaland – Elevator and in the second half of the video we have a remix of Kanye West’s – Stronger by Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. For M&M we have Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland – 4 minutes. Both had excellent choices of songs that matched their videos and styles perfectly. But I have to say that I liked ACDC’s music selection better not only because I thought their songs were catchier but because they are more innovative as well. 4 minutes had more air time on the radio than Elevator did at the time. I’m also sure that in terms of directing and editing it was harder to cut random clips of ACDC dancing and putting them together to make a fluid video compared to M&M’s natural music video – like video. So props to Jon Chu for that.

So what’s the bottom – line?
I think in the end Round 1 goes to ACDC. Despite M&M’s impressive theatrical performance it doesn’t seem to provide enough fight against ACDC’s smooth street moves. Yet we’re far from determining who the winner for this battle is. I can’t wait for Round 2 to commence, but as a spoiler ACDC’s video for Round 2 was already released. So get ready for a follow up article on Round 2 next time!

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