Presenting Spidey Ninja

It’s a fact: We at Dance Spirit cannot get enough of dancing animal videos. (Examples A and B—and take a peek inside your April issue for our cutest round-up ever,”Puppy Love,” with dancers and their dancing pooches.)

So imagine our glee when we discovered a new video, this time with the exotic peacock spider bustin’ a move. OK, fine—it’s really a mating call to female spiders, not a real “dance” per se. But watch the ‘lil furry guy in action! (And if you don’t love spiders, consider yourself warned, and skip to what’s below the clip.)

Javier Ninja, photo by Erin Baiano for DS

Remind you of anything? The tick-tick-tick staccato motion totally made me think of Javier Ninja, the world-renowned vogue dancer from the Legendary House of Ninja. Of course, put the two in a dance battle and spidey would totally get schooled by Javier. In fact, the new-way-voguer typically takes home the top prize in major competitions, including the House Dance International Championships. He’s performed not only on super-sized Superbowl stages with Madonna, but also in major concert dance venues—at the Joyce Theater in Doug Elkins’ work Scott, Queen of Marys, and at NYC’s downtown Danspace with fellow voguer Archie Burnett. Before Javier was named a 2014 Dance Magazine “25 to Watch,” Dance Spirit asked the master to explain just what exactly vogueing is. His demonstration is to die for:

Your browser does not support the video tag.