Justin Timberlake performs at the MTV Video Music Awards. Photo / AP
There was a lot of dancing at the MTV Video Music Awards this week - some good, some bad, and some downright dirty.
Justin Timberlake - dubbed the President of Pop by US comedian and talk show host Jimmy Fallon who introduced him - can dance. Even when he's doing
those robotic movements as he glides across the floor - in my day we used to call it bop - he still looks natural.
But then there's Kanye West who can't really dance. He gestures, lunges, and bounds on the spot, and does this rather odd hand-shaking thing like he's touched a hot oven (although you imagine he doesn't do much cooking at home for Kim and North).
And much has been said about Miley Cyrus already this week. She would have broken her daddy's achy breaky heart with her twerking-cum-lap dance routine with Robin Thicke during a trashy and awful version of his hit Blurred Lines. But this was the VMAs so there has to be at least one artist performing wearing next to nothing, making a spectacle of themselves, and dividing opinion over whether they pulled it off or not. I'm no prude - really, I'm not - but Cyrus' wee performance wasn't a success. Not because it was awkwardly try-hard, but because thrusting ain't dancing.
Last Saturday night, at my wife's mum's 70th birthday, we danced to Blurred Lines - and no, there was no humping and thrusting at all. That would have been weird. But we had a hoot, especially since it was followed by Poi E, I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift, Get Lucky by Daft Punk, Abba's Dancing Queen, and, er, Simply the Best by Tina Turner (a request from the birthday girl). I tell ya, it was hit after hit with three generations of party-goers getting down, from my 2-year-old daughter Katie doing her version of a Daft Punk-meets-Justin Timberlake robot dance through to my mother-in-law's 80-year-old brother.
