Bohm hits Manchester Gallery

@mcrartgallery It reads like a WWII headline but the Bohm in question is Dorothy Bohm.  In the days of the war in 1942 she exploded onto the photography scene in Manchester having graduated from the College of Technology, working in a leading studio of the time and ultimately opening her own 'Studio Alexandria' a few years later.

Currently on show in Manchester Art Gallery, Dorothy's work is displayed from her early days through to her latest pieces, spanning an incredible 60 years.  The scope and scale of the exhibition gives us a glimpse of a fascinating and talented individual as we are given the opportunity to travel with them through their professional career whilst giving us a fresh perspective of cultural change across more than half a century.

 Written across the walls of the exhibition are Dorothy's words, capturing the beating heart of her craft. This is highlighted most profoundly in a quote reflecting her deep psychological and emotional connection to her work and a desire to understand and capture the transience of beauty.
"The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing. It makes transience less painful and retains some of the special magic, which I have looked for and found. I have tried to create order out of chaos, to find stability in flux and beauty in the most unlikely places."

Perhaps in her most recent colour works this statement rings most true, where the feeling has shifted from tonally beautiful representations of people and places through to a more abstract, subjective beauty from the arrangements of colours, shapes and textures of scenes where it seemed least obvious.  Leaving the prints untouched of any enhancements adds to this innate beauty she strives to capture.

Throughout much of her career she focused on black and white, with little attention to colour, moving away from portraiture to open air 'street' photography which she nurtured in Switzerland.  Interestingly, despite this transition she still maintained the 'human presence' as the main focus of her work.

For us today, viewing her work gives us glimpses into a changing world, both at home and abroad, with it's changing people and places.   This is emphasised further by her own transition from black and white to colour, which she finally adopted in the 80's after visiting the colour-soaked continent of Asia, sparking a new era in her illustrious career.

The exhibition is on at Manchester City Art Gallery @mcrartgallery until 30th August.

Dorothy Bohm Website
Manchester Art Gallery 

Window to the soul

Most of us buy a fair bit online these days, so why do we even bother heading to the high-street at all when etailers are usually offering us the same stuff for less?
It sounds stupid, but it's the 'realness' of being in the shopping environment, the tangible, your shopping senses tingling like crazy that appeals to us. If we buy clothes, or anything else, do we not want to be immersed in a brand's image, feel part of that image, touch and try on that image and ultimately buy into it?  To me, it's where successful brands thrive. The in-store environment is critical to successful living as a brand.  Abercrombie & Fitch's notorious frat house/night club/country manor on Savile row is the epitome of this, managing aspects from music levels, pin-up staff, to own brand fragrance sprayed religiously throughout the day. And since first impressions are all important, where better to start than the shop window.
There's loads of brilliant examples of great brands using those transparent, visual gateways to create a spectacle. To create that 'other-world' we all want to step into.  Think of it as a Hollywood movie, where you can take home part of the set. You might pay an 'entry fee' compared to the online equivalent but you got an experience. You got something far more absorbing, sensual and immersive. An experience far more satisfying while you handed over your cash, than you ever could on a soulless website.

So, some great window displays:  French Connection are getting a few heads turning (literally), using the 2 layer, reflective panels and weaving in their latest marketing icon 'The Man' manikin heads with this style.

Kate Moss, on the launch of her new range, famously modelled in the windows of TopShop, Oxford Street.

All Saints of Spitalfields, Manchester Store has huge windows full of old Singer sewing machines emphasising their hand-tailored, industrial image.

Diesel is famous for it's in-store design, and pushed it further by branching out to develop its own range of industrial-edged homewares.  It's recent 'Be Stupid' campaign posterized their window displays with large, extremely bold print and was backed up by some cool marketing materials.  In particular was a brochure, showing various ways people were being stupid, including smoking with a welders mask on. Genius. But then we know Diesel has a penchant for art.

Selfridges too, are famed for their elaborate window excellence. Here's a few examples spanning from a funky-biker santa, modern gothic/grunge to bizzare burlesque crossed with the tudors:

Herzog & de Meuron

I've mentioned these guys before, but having recently visited the Allianz Arena, home of Bayern München, and TSV 1860 München, I was blown away by the architecture and design of this stadium. Finished in 2005, the stadium is sublime in its originality and style; the ETFE-foil air panels create an incredible visual impact.  Inflated with dry air they are both matte and translucent depending on how close you are to them, and change colour depending on which team is playing.  Beyond the beautiful symmetry of the stadium itself, even the seats have the 'bubble' style of the exterior.  So impressive is it that the Meadowlands Stadium, the (soon to open) home of the New York Jets and Giants, is using the same light technology.  
Closer to home, the architecture firm is also responsible for the transformation of the Bankside Powerstation into our favourite gallery, The Tate Modern, London, whilst even further afield, the incredible 110,000 tonnes of steel, meshed and fused together, created Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium and is an another example of their genius.  Notably, the idea for this 'nest-scheme' evolved from Chinese ceramics, truly grounding the design in its surroundings.
From the Prada building in Tokyo, to 1111 Lincoln Road car park in Miami, Herzog & de Meuron have come up with some breathtaking architectural masterpieces.
Ada Louise Huxtable commented on the approach of the firm as refining "the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques." Jacques Herzog himself bluntly points out the power of this approach, "A building is a building. It cannot be read like a book; it doesn't have any credits, subtitles or labels like picture in a gallery. In that sense, we are absolutely anti-representational. The strength of our buildings is the immediate, visceral impact they have on a visitor."  
Based on my visit to the Allianz Arena, I'd say they were bang on the mark for 'immediate, visceral impact.'

Body Dysmorphia in Art

 @gagosian. We're all a bit insecure let's face it.  Some hate those extra few pounds they can now grab around their waist after gorging themselves on kebabs or necking copious amounts of Carling. Others are at war with their skin and some just hate everything about themselves. If you fall into the final category, it might be worth seeking some professional help.
Whatever it is, most of us are obsessed with the way we look. And we could be forgiven for being like this - just look at the airbrushed beauties that we are presented with, day after day, billboard after TV ad,
magazine after shop window.  Models, printed out to god-like proportions, silently screaming 'you want to look like me!', across our cities, through our TV sets and from the glossy sheets. So when we don't quite match up to these airbrushed gods we turn resentful  and play out an endless battle of self loathing and image fueled purchasing of new clothes and beauty products.  Dove's viral ad, 'Onslaught', a few years ago represented this idea beautifully.  And if you were deluding yourself that people actually look like 'that' in real life, the 'Evolution' ad demonstrates how, with a good camera set and Photoshop skills, you can turn plain-Jane into a stunner.

Let's get back to art.  Jenny Saville is fascinated by this idea of self-image and its physical representation. Producing works in the style of Bacon, Freud and Rubens she creates fleshly, larger than life, oil-painted visions of bodies and self-disgust.  Although her focus is the female form she often undermines the sex/gender boundaries in her pieces.  In the early 90's she spent hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York and admits "Bodies fascinate me. I find having the framework of a body essential. Having flesh as a central subject, I can channel a lot of ideas."  Her paintings, while they are grotesque in the bodily representation, superbly capture the grimy reality and extreme of body dysmorphia. The viewer is left repulsed in appreciation of these images that are in stark contrast to those on the advertising billboards around the corner - ironically hinting at exactly the same thing.

Latest Exhibition
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-04-15_jenny-saville/


Dove 'Onslaught'
Greenpeace 'Onslaught-er'
Dove 'Evolution'

On To The Next One

So what happened to all the women with barely any clothes on, prancing about, grinding against their singing 'pimps'?
Jay-Z has broken the mold on this one by bringing in Director Sam Brown.  He's directed a couple of Foo Fighters tracks (The Pretender, Wheels) as well as The Verve's Love is Noise.  This video for Jay-Z's single (Feat Swizz Beatz) 'On to the Next One' from the Blueprint III is a visual treat and surely one of his finest productions to date.  Black and white, sleek and edgy, grungey and gothic, stylized and clean, surreal and oppressive, this video is a piece of art that you'll watch over and over again. The Damien Hirst skulls dripping with paint, the fiery basketballs, the ink in water and visualised beats all hooked up to an awesome track have made this one of the finest and progressive videos I've seen for ages.

Watch:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU
Sam Brown: http://www.flynnproductions.com/music/director/sam_brown/bio/

Phi and the Golden Ratio

φ

It sounds like it might be Roald Dahl's unreleased sequel to James and the Giant Peach, but it's not.
Is it the answer to our aesthetic dreams?  Well maybe, but whatever it is, this number has fascinated mathematicians, architects and artists for millenia now, so it must mean something right?
I don't really get maths but this has something to do with the proportions of two quantities:

"two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to (=) the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one"

Ok, so I don't get it but it's interesting because it's eveywhere.  Not only does it seem to be part of the design of nature, but it's consciously or unconsciously shaped many of the greatest pieces of art and architecture around us.  Some dimensions of the Acropolis, the Pantheon, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Mosque of Kairouan have it, Salvador Dali used it in his  'Sacrament of the Last Supper'.  Da Vinci's illustrations in De Divina Proportione and The Vitruvian man exhibit it, and it is expressed in the structure of branches, the stems of plants and even the veins in their leaves.

So I wonder, is it in the design of your iPod?

Remember it when you're designing your next building, painting your next painting or measuring your next garment...does it look better now?

φ = 1.6180339887...

It's cold outside...but really?

OK so temperatures have plummeted to about 2oC again but fashion designers Viktor and Rolf have taken it a bit far.  They wrapped their wirey model up in 23 layers for their lastest catwalk show, legs quivering, heels shaking and no doubt ready to collapse under the strain of an oversized fur coat, that  could take one of these models down on it's own.  Added to the fact she may not have eaten for a few days and we should conclude that she deserves a medal for this one.   Nevertheless the 'Glamour Factory' is intriguing and while I'm not big on the whole catwalk thing, it does give a pretty cool spin (literally) to what is typically just a long line of struting noodles in bizzare concotions, all ready to be dummed down for us plebs who can't pull it off.
The pieces themselves are also pretty decent, in my ignorant opinion.  Huge 'shawl-like' coats are transformed into fitted, slinky coats and pencil skirts at the flick of a few zips.  I quite fancy a 'shawl-coat'  for myself now. Some of the look is still quite industrial, grungey, gothic with  the black aviators, caps and metal buttons & zips - I wonder what the men's fashion take would be.  It sends you a bit loopy when you realise all the models look like clones....

After 18 minutes the girl ends up back wrapped up for the new cold front again - poor thing.

Watch Catwalk

Am I Just a Battery Hen?

I want to have a rant about office jobs and I've been trying to think of a way to shoehorn it into this 'arty' blog.  I've been reading a lot of stuff supplied by friends and friends of friends who are 'livin' the dream' in far flung places, abandoning the 9-5 for a life of free-living and entrepreneurism.  A guy called Tim Ferris has a book about it called the 'Four Hour Work Week', telling you how to create your online business empire, move to a paradise of low-cost living and viola, you're free to live the 'millionaire' lifestyle you always dreamed off.

Here's some further reading....

http://untemplater.com/ by one of those friends of friends.

And here's the 'arty' shoehorn:

Graphic designer Alex Woolley came up with this little masterpiece which I think perfectly represents the average office worker.  A low wage, egg producing machine, couped-up in his lacklustre pen, eventually finding himself dead, enveloped in a cellophane coat on a foamy boogieboard - just when there's just no boogie left. No doubt this was stress induced from endless early mornings, sardine commutes, hours of pretending to be interested & the tedium of trying to fill those 7hours...binge drinking and/or drug taking at the weekend 'cattle markets' to try and escape the embarrassment that is...your life - though most of them would just call it a 'messy weekend'.  Messy indeed.
At least you saved up for a good retirement though eh?  All those years working your arse off, making it possible for some other guy to live the 'millionaire' lifestyle, while you save up for the time when you'll 'live your dreams', grey-haired and barely able to put one foot in front of another without a helping hand from 3M (they make new joints, for the uninformed).

Take note people, this is your time.

Don't be another battery hen.

The space between our ears, or glasses.

The Japanese called it 'ma' in garden design, some people have a lot of it between their ears and others believe that it's actually dark matter.  Negative space: Whatever it is, some people just like using it for artistic effect.

So, tasked with designing an object to celebrate the anniversary of the classic Coca Cola bottle Paul Daly came up with this little masterpiece.  Using the negative space between 2 beautifully crafted crystal glasses he 'pseudo-creates' the best unmade coke bottle of all time.  Genius.


http://pauldaly.com/index.php

Here's a poem from philosopher Lao Tse about this whole negative space (ma) thing: so very profound.:

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,

but the empty space between them

is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty space between it

is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,

but the empty space within it

is the essence of the house

X-RAY Images

Was having a look through a modern art book in Waterstones and found this guy, Nick Veasey.  He takes pictures using x-ray machines, airport security scanners etc. to produce some pretty cool images.

There's something a bit voyeuristic about some of them, particularly the clothing ones.  Others, that focus their attention on technological/structural objects, including people are fascinating to look at. Some, like the flower above, are just fantastic images.

A quick look at Nick's 'About' highlights how he aims to subvert our cultural emphasis on image.  He wants to add intrigue to the familar by representing the integral beauty:  "by revealing the inside, the quintessential element of my art specualtes upon what the manufactured and natural world really consists of."  He's got a short section on the process of making these things on his site - really interesting.

        http://www.nickveasey.com/

J J J J R

OK, so sadly I won't be writing about the music producer J.R. Rotem, who you may have heard in a whole host of songs combining 1 to 3 elements of 'J.J.J.J.R', a large air-horn or 'Beluga Heights'.

No instead I'm talking about JR, the French 'pioneering' photographer, 'pioneering' perhaps as much in his political motivations and ideals as he is a visualist and artist.

He's responsible for some incredible 'installations'...well, more 'mega-prints' in the biggest art gallery in the world:  The planet is his canvas.  Just like his prints, his lens isn't focused on the ordinary or the conventional. His website biog states that his work  fuses "Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit."  After kick-starting his photographic career capturing the portraits of Parisian gangsters and displaying them  in the bourgeoisie districts, JR was always going to continue to make bold, politically and culturally subversive statements. The boldest of all being his 'Face to Face' project. It was largest illegal photography exhibition ever, putting photographs of Israeli and Palestinian faces side by side in cities either side of the border as well as either side of the fence that separates them.
More recently his 'Women' project aimed to represent and highlight the dignity of women who are the target of conflicts.  As with much of his work, once the original 'exhibitions' have been completed, from walls in India, trains and bridges in Kenya to the hill slums of Brazil, it's taken to European cities to be displayed and reinterpreted. The 'Women' photography was displayed along the Seine and there is a video on the site which captures its creation and its passing.

In many ways JR's work is about hope. It's about representing the unrepresented and those discriminated against (rightly or wrongly) in such a way as to be provocative and challenging.  The focus and placement of his work forces the observer to remove the boundaries of subject and object.  More than that, there is a humour in his work that subverts any political or cultural discrimination of the subjects and for that reason he creates a glimmer of a changed world for just a flitting moment.  The disposability of his installations, on piles of bricks, soon-to-be-demolished buildings', highlight the transience of these moments and are brilliantly summed up by the final piece of the Women exhibition washing into the gutter in Paris. (See video on his homepage [below]).

Whether I keep being drawn to the anonymous type or its just a popular artist's marketing trend, JR is another one keeping his identity a secret.  If the work that Bansky, Miss Bugs and JR produce is anything to go by, I'm looking forward to finding some more of the 'shy artist' types.

J.R

http://jr-art.net/

J.R. Rotem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._Rotem

Ich Mag Marc Woehr

I'm sorry Miss Bugs but I've found a German I like more. Plus I recently read about you and found out that in fact you are two people, a girl and a guy (Miss & Bugs). So, I've moved on and found Marc Woehr. It's a random story of how we met. I was in a backpacker hostel in Munich browsing all the 'tourist' guff out on reception. I spotted a small mag called re.flect with a Sin City looking fashion shot on the front. After realising it was in Deutsche I nearly chucked it. But then I saw these spraypainted, dark, moody cityscapes with his name on. I get a sense of misery and depression out of them interspersed with the lightning blots of flourescent emphasising a glimmer of hope, of creativity maybe, sparking up out of apocalyptic, monochrome highrises.

Time to hear from Marc in his interview for re.flect (the only bit not in German in the whole magazine) : "My favourite colour is black (even though technically it is not a colour)....[I use] techniques to being the 'imagined' onto our spatial plane. I always use a single line as a source, letting it develop into a shape which only seems to truly be."

Ok Marc, so you've totally lost me there, maybe they didn't translate you properly or maybe I need to sit and stare at your work for an extended period of time to see this evolving single line. Even so...ich liebe es.

http://www.marcwoehr.de

Technorati Claim - E96AG4ESYTMK

Dirty Beach Art

I had another recollection this morning; wandering along the Thames a few years ago by the Globe Theatre and doing a double-take when I saw a crew of people on the little 'beach' below us carving out a dragon and some treasure out of the sand. Not only was I surprised there was even any sand in London but I was sure some sort of tide would wash them away, dragon n all. 5m below the wall, it drew in quite a crowd. Maybe we were all waiting in some sort of sadistic expectation for that tide, or maybe we were just appreciating some modern art, after-all, the Tate Modern was just about in your peripheral from here. I think I even took a picture on some old camera phone but since then, when they only had a MySpace page, it looks like the guys at DirtyBeach have hit the BigTime. Their work is incredible and some big companies have started to commission installations: Pepsi, Cannes, C4, Glastonbury etc. Next stop, my back garden.

http://www.dirtybeach.tv/

Decapitator

Following on from the theme below I also found this guy a couple of years back and looks like he's still going strong. The Decapitor basically goes around any advertising billboards/posters/newspapers/phonebox etc that have a human head on and make is looks like it's been chopped off. A little bit gruesome some might say, but I would say that it's brilliantly executed graffitti - spray paint is last century for this bloke.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_decapitator/

Vandalism of the Fortune 500

That's right - Advertising is the vandalism of the Fortune 500. Or at least that is what one online group, dedicated to 'anti-advertising' says, and I kinda like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Al_2a7uObY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qaf5ytRnbU&NR=1

Ok so this post was based on a video on YouTube with the title 'We are 500' which I now can't find, which is a shame cos it was ace. Because of that, I've now found loads of other stuff, equally as interesting and on topic, particualrly when I get in one of my 'advertising stifles true creativity' moods....

Here's the link to that online entity dedicated to 'anti-advertising' - makes an interesting read. The Artvertising project looks pretty cool - basicaly swapping ads for art.

http://antiadvertisingagency.com/

Anyway, as people slowly turn off to the thousands of messages which bombard them every single day, advertisers have to find better ways to grab our attention. You could almost say that their improved 'creativity' is testament to our growing lack of interest. At the core of it all is selling products but it's more and more obvious that to do this requires the brand to create conversation by being entertaining and interesting in a more genuine way. Entertainment for entertainments sake, art for arts sake rather than some feigned interest to try and con us all. Consumers are way too savvy, we all see right through attempts to half-heartedly bribe us. Essentially we want to be entertained, brands need to be the entertainment, the interesting things to look at. Only then we'll decide if we want to buy anything thank you.

Diesel does wine?...etc

Ok so maybe I'm having an adult equivalent to a teenage crush on lighter fluid but i'm loving Diesel. I mentioned that they do furniture (with a tie up with egdy Italian furniture company Moroso), lighting (after a hook up with stylish Italian lighting company Foscarini) and textiles (Probably Moroso again) but I felt they were worth a picture... as they are THAT cool. I want a bedroom like that, and a cage light like that.
So anyway, they also do wine from the Diesel Farm. Ok so they don't make the wine (I don't think - though I wouldn't be surprised) but they do the bottle design. Apparently the Diesel Farm represents their 'commitment to originality and innovation, while respecting the history of wine making' - fair enough. They look quality and yet again shows how you can pretty much take a brand anywhere, and if you're good enough (and cool enough) it just seems to work.
Credit to Renzo Rosso (Owner/Genius) and Wilbert Das (Creative Director/Genius).

Diesel Furniture
Diesel Lighting
Diesel Textiles
Diesel Farm

Diesel does hotels?

Diesel - Pelican Hotel

I didn't know this, but edgy fashion giant Diesel also appears to be a bit of a dab hand at interior design as well. Not only does it have it's own furniture, textiles, helmets and tie ups with the likes of FIAT but it also set up Pelican Hotel in Miami Beach in 1994 and it's one of the coolest things I've seen for a while. The quirky brand is already well know for it's bold and quirky instore designs but this is ingenious. It has created a hotel with uber-cool themed rooms from the one left, which looks like a dentist's surgery and surreally named 'With Drill', to a boudoir called 'Best Whorehouse'. The website is bang on as well, there's even a suggested track to listen to as you browse the rooms. Mixing quality style, humour and a talent for fashion and design Diesel's brave and bold....here's to successful living.

http://www.pelicanhotel.com/

I ♥ Miss Bugs

I think I just found a new art love...Miss Bugs. She's like Bansky but whilst there's his satirical tone leaking through some of her work with names like' Dirty Art Holding Hands With Politics', 'It's All About Advertising - Above the Line, Below the Line', she's (assuming it is a she and not just Banksy's female alter ego) got a more refined, edgy, synergistic look goin' on, blending design with screen print and classic celeb portraits...splashed with some bold colouring. I love it. Awesome. Not only has she built brilliantly on the whole 'Bansky anonynymous graffitti artsist' thing but developed that grunge feel with some hard-edged design. Simply awesome.


Website
http://www.missbugs.com/

Will Robson Scott - Urban Photography

This guy's shots stood out for me at the Homegrown Hip Hop Exhibition in Urbis. The light boxes helped but there was a griity realism and a real stylised sense of the illicit that he captured perfectly in the shots of grafitti artists hunting for a canvas

http://www.dazeddigital.com/Photography/gallery/27/3889/6/Creative_Portfolio_Will_Robson-Scott

Homegrown @ urbis

homegrown @ urbis

This exhibition was an interesting history and development of the UK hip hop scene, covering loads of stuff through loads of different mediums...well worth a look, it's shame the Urbis is making way, in its current form, for the National Football Museum, could do with more stuff like this! As if we don't have enough football everywhere - representative of the nation?
Anyway the exhibition gives a real insight into a scene which I for one, coming from a totally different background, was totally ignorant of the depth, reach and complexity of. The collection of photos, videos music and memorabilia really brought the place to life and a true flava of the underground culture that has grown out from its American roots.
I wonder what other subcultures I don't know much about?


http://www.urbis.org.uk/page.asp?id=3340

3D Photography

What with Avatar reigniting everyone's passion for cinema, the growth of 3D is bound to keep taking leaps forward.Here's a look at the static side of film and how it is embracing 3D. Not exactly good for your eyes methinks? Someone is really going to have to think of something better than 'NHS prescription' glasses and eye crossing to make this truly accessible out of cinema format - contact lenses?

If you want to see the image (right) in 3D do this:
1. Go crosseyed until you see a third image between these two
2. Concentrate on the third image
3.Relax the eyes and let the image come into focus

Who first came up with this method I don't know!

http://digital-photography-school.com/9-crazy-cross-eye-3d-photography-images-and-how-to-make-them

So You Think You Can Dance?

There have been a couple of contemporary lyrcial pieces which have really captured the imagination and the heart. The best of which is Charlie's (and forget his name's) portrayal of a couple dealing with cancer, awesome stuff. Also worth a watch are Mark & Lizzie's lyrical hip hop piece in week 1, the lyrical contemporary piece to Lady Gaga's Speechless and Mark &Tommy's hip hop piece to Daft Punk in the final. It's refreshing to see a program not full of mostly talentless celebrities and instead something with people with real talent in their field.
I'm slightly biased as I love dance and dancing but recently there's been a surge in programs around more contemporary dance styles (post Strictly Come Dancing: SYTYCD?, Got to Dance, Dancing On Wheels) as well as the success of the likes of Diversity, soon to star in 'Streetdance 3D' movie. I'll admit that I actually watched (and liked) Step Up movies - ok so the acting is pants but the choreography is ace, especially the finale of Step Up 2: The Streets.
Maybe the moment has passed or maybe there is an opportunity to piggy back on the dance scene...or maybe it's been done already?

SYTYCD?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS1u5HKPcMM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xW_aDYtJk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoWghZWW-iw

Nike Dance Ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxWG-gVGqAU

Step Up 2: The Streets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERAKSGvqdQ