Matt Harding's simple, sincere dance has brought him hundreds of fans around the world.
It's already taken him around the world — twice — and he's currently in the middle of his third global jaunt.
It started in 2003 when Harding quit his job as a video game designer and decided to travel the world.
"I was traveling with a friend, and we were taking snapshots in Hanoi, and he said, 'Why don't you do that stupid dance you used to do, and I'll shoot videotape with this camera,'" says Harding. "So we did it, and it cracked me up. I liked how it turned out. So I kept on doing it everywhere else on the trip."
Harding says he's done the dance, a kind of dust-kicking, arms and legs akimbo stomp, almost since he could walk.
He went to 15 countries on that first trip, dancing in front of some of the world's most famous landmarks, from the Kremlin to the Taj Mahal. At the end, he cut the clips to music and put them on a website, wherethehellismatt.com.
"It didn't occur to me that it would be something interesting to anyone — pretty much anyone other than me," he says, "I thought maybe I could show it to friends and family and they'd get a kick out of it."
Harding says no one really watched until a friend posted the dance clip on his blog.
"Within a week after he posted," Harding says, "the video had been downloaded 20,000 times."
From there, it began to spread like a virus.
"The big discovery was that people who have no idea who I am watch it, and I'm just this guy, but it still resonates in some way for them," Harding says. "And I think it makes people able to put themselves in my shoes, and think, 'Boy, I'd really like to go to these places, this is something I'd really want to do.'"
The video got the attention of candy-maker Cadbury-Adams, which was launching a new chewing gum brand called Stride. They proposed sponsoring Harding on another global trip, as a small viral marketing element of a $50 million product rollout campaign.
"It's my dance I do when I'm happy." — Matt Harding
Harding, they believed, reached their target audience of web-savvy 18-24 year olds, and his marathon global shuffle tied in with the gum's marketing hook of "ridiculously long-lasting flavor."
Harding had some reservations. "I went into the situation of the relationship with Stride with a lot of reluctance," he says. "I was worried about what it was going to turn into and if I was going to spoil it."
And for good reason. Many of Harding's viewers say it's his bespectacled, innocent abroad image that they connect with — an uncommercial exuberance that could be lost in a slicked-up package. Cadbury promised to be hands off.
In the end, Harding decided to take the deal.
On his second journey he more than doubled the countries he traveled to on his first trip — 39 in just six months. At times the trip felt more like a race than a dance. (He started in December of 2005 and needed to be done by June 2006, in time for Stride's launch.)
The journey included both majestic sites like Antarctica and mundane backdrops like a junkyard in Guam.
He busted moves with turtles in Galapagos, kangaroos in Australia, walruses on South Shetland Island and elephants in Botswana, even with non-stinging jellyfish in a lake in Micronesia.
He danced amidst icons — the giant stone heads of Easter Island, the ruins of Machu Picchu, the canals of Venice, the carved stone walls of Petra.
Harding has danced in dozens of locations, including some dangerous spots, like this suspended rock in Norway.
His most memorable moment, though, was in a small village in Rwanda.
"I just started dancing and all these kids standing around thought it was hilarious, and started dancing as well... There was no communication. I didn't tell them what I was going to do."
In a nation defined by genocide, Harding says the video showed another side.
"I feel like everything we see, particularly out of somewhere like Rwanda, is these images of horror and devastation that happen there. It becomes dehumanizing. I think we see the suffering and we don't think of them as being like us."
The video Harding did for Stride got six million hits. Stride commissioned another video — a collection of Harding's outtakes from the trip — and started negotiations for yet another trip.
Harding has loftier goals for this excursion.
"The basic idea here is that the last video was about the places and this video is all about the people," Harding says. He plans to dance with a group of local people in each location.
Harding says that sponsored or not, the dance still does connect with people, because it's really not about him, or the gum. It's about exploring new things while not being afraid to look silly doing your dance of gratitude.
"It's my dance I do when I'm happy," he says, "and when there are moments that I find a place that is just so beautiful, it's kind of just a physical expression of how great it is to be there."
-Producer: Robert Padavick
-Video editor: Jon Brick
-Motion graphics: Chris Strimbu
-Madrid photos in video 2 courtesy Santiago Lopez Pena
-Madrid video in video 2 courtesy Raquel Villarroya
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