WTF Chinese Beach Party Dance Video!

In case you missed it, and you probably did, recently on Youtube there has been a growing popularity of these wild and funny low-budget, locally-filmed, WTF Chinese dance music videos! Think cheap Bollywood on too much caffeine. Well for this one entitled "Local Swimsuit Dance - (Chinese peasant singer dancing)", the uploader/owner of the video zuoyezhideng claims the following:



"This is a very low budget production for peasants in southwest China. All the dancers in the video are peasant singers. They usually sing funny/flirting/teasing songs to each other, which is a tradition of rural southwest China. A lot of the people in the video have hundreds of Albums and are very popular in rural southwest China."



WARNING: This is a NSFW age-restricted music video which once seen, cannot be unseen:







You can see more of these kind of WTF, funny videos on Zuoyezhideng's Youtube channel.

Brigitte Carnochan

Delicate and enchanting work by American photographer Brigitte Carnochan.

Brigitte Carnochan Photography

Soho Magazine - Galerias Mujeres

While the focus is primarily glamour photography, there are well over a hundred sets of male and female nudes in the gallery section of Columbian Soho Magazine's website. Lots and lots to explore.

Soho Magazine - Galerias Mujeres

Scott Chappell

Accomplished work by UK photographer Scott Chappell.

Scott Chappell

Klaus Kampert

Really exceptional figure and dance photography by German Klaus Kampert.

Klaus Kampert Photography

Gian Marco Marano

Dance and figure photography by Italian photographer and Art Nudes reader Gian Marco Marano.

Gianmarcomarano.com

Klaus Kampert

Lovely nude and dance images by German photographer  Klaus Kampert.

Klaus Kampert Photography

Karel Vojkovsky

It's been too long since I featured the exceptional figure work of Czech photographer Karel Vojkovsky. Superb stuff, I only wish he had new work to show...

vojkovsky.com

Milos Burkhardt

Strong black & white figure study and movement work by Czech photographer Milos Burkhardt.

Burki photogallery

Bryon Paul McCartney

Bryon Paul McCartney's "The Girl Who Could Fly" series is still one of my personal favourites.

Fashion, Fetish, Fine Art Nude and Portrait - Photographer Bryon Paul McCartney

For those of you fortunate enough to be in Italy this summer, Bryon is teaching two 6-day Fine Art Nude Photography Workshops 2010 in Tuscany.

The workshop dates are:

Light, Form and Expression, 20-26 June
Cultivating a Unique Style, 27 June - 03 July

Further details can be found on his website.

Dancing the Body

¡Hola! Everybody...
I went to sleep and when I woke up, Spring had srung! LOL!

* * *

-=[ Dancing With the Devil ]=-

"Let’s get retarded/ Let’s get retarded in here... ”

-- Black-Eyed Peas

[Note: Initially, the Black-Eyed Peas song Let’s Get it Started was titled Let’s Get Retarded]

Popular music is deeply informed by an African worldview wherein the body is experienced as separate from the brain. From this point of view, the body is the “large” brain.

When Black-Eyed Peas incite you to “get retarded,” they are not referring to an intellectual capacity. They are inciting you toward an experience of the totality of yourself. They are challenging you to entertain the idea that your body is a healthy focus for artistic and spiritual attention.

In our culture, we tend to live inside of our heads all the time. It’s as if we live from the “neck up,” as a friend of mine likes to say. In living in this overly analytical and “brain”-focused manner, we lose sight of our intuitive bodies -- of the power of our bodies to enlighten and guide us. In fact, current research on brain function shows that our “brains” aren’t really in our heads. There’s a historical foundation for this disgust with the body in puritanical societies.

You think I'm crazy? Well, next time you go out dancing watch an accomplished dancer, or any dancer. A good salsa dancer, for example, is beyond technique, in abandoning herself to the ancient rhythms of the Orishas, she enters a flow state of bliss. In those peak moments, she experiences union, a creative and spiritual state. That’s the brain/ mind/ body working as an integrated whole.

That’s why we all love the dance. It’s a metaphor and tool for engaging the spiritual within us -- to “get retarded” means to stop the mental fuckery. It means to get out of our heads and down into the reality of our bodies.

And you know? The ancient West Africans, as well as many other ancient cultures, got it right. The mind/ brain is not solely the province of the “head.” There is brain tissue in the gut area, for example (behind the stomach -- ever had a “gut feeling”?), chemical reactions throughout the body are constantly occurring, informing the mind/ brain and vice versa. Therefore, the “brain” is not something inside of our head, but our whole -- our consciousness -- our “felt” sense.

So, here we are finding out after years of Descartes error that the body is the brain and that we forsake the body at peril of losing touch with the intuition and eternal wisdom of the body.

Folks:

“LET’S GET RETARDED!

LET'S GET RETARDED IN HERE!...

LOL

Eddie

Jasper Johal Photography

 

Here's a small but interesting selection of yoga nudes by photographer Jasper Johal that I stumbled across while researching for an upcoming shoot.

Jasper Johal Photography

Michael Papendieck

 

Striking figure studies and phenomenal dance photos by German photographer Michael Papendieck.

Michael Papendieck

Richard Griffin

Here's an extensive portfolio of traditional film and darkroom work by American photographer Richard Griffin.

Richard Griffin

Richard also wrote in to let us know about his newly minted blog Amelie D'Arcy Nudes which is dedicated to solely to images his taken with his favourite model dating back to the early 1990s. (That's Amelie in the photo above.)

Amelie D'Arcy Nudes

Stephan Brauchli

Here's a fairly diverse portfolio of work by photographer Stephan Brauchli.

Photos by Stephan Brauchli - photo.net

Jaime Ibarra

Hallucinatory, dream-like work by photographer Jaime Ibarra.

(Update: Jaime Ibarra is actually a Spanish/Australian photographer currently residing in the U.S.) Thanks to the artist and Rita in the comments section for the correction.

IbarraPhoto - The Photography of Jaime Ibarra

Philippe Pache

Elegant and romantic work by Swiss photographer Philippe Pache.

Philippe Pache, photographe

Germen Peraire

Exceptional two person figure studies and other work by Spanish photographer Germem Peraire.

Germen Peraire Photography

steve richard photography

Fellow Canadian Steve Richard wrote in to let us know he's revamped and updated his website. As usual, he blows my mind with his superb images of arrested motion. His new series, "Cloudbusting" is incredible.

steve richard photography

Ruslan Maksimov

Some stunning poses to be found in the work of the Russian photographer Ruslan Maksimov. The site is entirely in Russian, but the forth link down on the left leads you to the nudes gallery.

JL-Studio