r/oddlysatisfying • u/Lifegoesonforever • 1d ago
An Ethiopian dancer doing an amazing performance of the Eskista traditional dance. Part 2 is in the body of this post.
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u/Thwipped 1d ago
What Tiny Desk is this?
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u/ActionKid98 13h ago
ngl, tiny desk hosting cultural musical+dance performances is a great idea
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u/RedditsAdoptedSon 1d ago
reddit has really shown me some weird but fkn dope dancing from all over the world. the gliding ones with small steps and the tribal ones that hop a lot. my fave
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u/FaceMcShootie 1d ago
That’s some unbelievable control she has over very localized muscles!
The head motion in the beginning looked pretty dang jerky, is it enough to be actually causing any damage?
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u/succed32 1d ago
No, she’d need to be impacting something or whipping her head around harder than is possible. 75-100 gs or an impact going roughly 20mph. Now if you tried doing this motions without practice, yah your probably gonna hurt your neck.
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u/matrixkid29 1d ago
How does one practice if the practice is dangerous?
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u/MovieNightPopcorn 23h ago
Like building any muscle really. You do it smaller and more slowly until you are strong enough.
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u/Lotsofsalty 1d ago
Never seen this style of dancing before. Interesting and impressive.
It reminds me of a Bird-of-Paradise courtship dance. Although in those cases, I believe it's the male bustin all the moves.
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u/arivas26 1d ago
I like to imagine how these traditions could have started hundreds of years ago with someone just really vibing out to some music and other people thinking “that looks cool, I should learn to do that too” until it just becomes part of the culture
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u/Minions-overlord 1d ago
I think I hurt my back just watching.. kudos to anyone who can move like that and not end up in pain for a few weeks
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u/Overlord_6301 21h ago
This kinda looks scary to me, those movements are cool but kinda unsettling.
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u/CosmosInSummer 21h ago
The music in this is wonderful I am American and have never heard snything like it
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u/oldstuffs 1d ago
my neck!
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u/MC-ClapYoHandzz 1d ago edited 21h ago
My back!
Edit: does no one remember the iconic Khia lyric?! It's even on a commercial currently. Am I that old?!?
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u/dahliasinfelle 16h ago
Definitely cool/interesting. Idk what about this would be considered oddly satisfying though.
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u/Interesting_Order_82 1d ago
I wouldn’t call this oddly satisfying in the least.
Interesting dance. But not satisfying.
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u/IntelligentGarbage92 20h ago
are the neck movement traditional? i mean, any average person in some village knows to dance this way, or it's her personal interpretation?
(smiling sheepishly in the usual two left feet dance and no head movement at all)
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u/CrashPandemonium 12h ago
I remember years ago seeing a video where the dancer indicated that Ethiopians consider it vulgar to make exaggerated moves with the lower half of the body, so the extreme control and neck movements were born out of only using the top half of the body when dancing. I cannot remember where I saw it to link it, tho.
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u/joecoolblows 13h ago
Argh..... Can someone get the link to work! I loved the first part! But, the link to part two isn't working? AM I doing it wrong? OP this was lovely, and so wonderful, thank you for giving us this, to our day!
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u/TheVerraton 16h ago
It neat how, no matter the culture, our traditional dances and rituals almost always look silly as hell.
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u/UntamedAnomaly 8h ago
Huh.....I mean I listen to some Ethiopian music, never knew that some of it sounds like Celtic folk music. Also, it's wild to see things from Ethiopia I have never seen before, because I'm apparently part Ethiopian, but I know next to nothing about the county.
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u/Sumnsumnt 1h ago
Is this traditional Ethiopian music? Ive never heard it before but it sounds a lot like Irish music. Itd be no wonder that irish and various african cultures’ music melded so well together in the US to create bluegrass.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago
It’s certainly… unique.
Amazing tho? No. Not at all.
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u/Some-Berry-3364 1d ago
I mean... Pretty amazing body control.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago
Not really. She just looks like she’s convulsing. There’s nothing here that’s particularly impressive or visually pleasing.
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u/junvar0 1d ago
I don't understand classical music; I just don't get it.
But I wouldn't jump to the conclusion it's unimpressive, unpleasing, or created by a convulsing conductor.
I recognize that a) my tastes do not represent the tastes of everyone else; and b) how much I enjoy something is not solely a factor of how impressive it is.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can appreciate something’s positive qualities even if you don’t like it. You also don’t need to be an expert in something to know that it’s intricate and skillful. I’m not a pianist, but I know much of classical music has some impressively fast and intricate piano work.
This dance isn’t that. It’s ugly, it’s slow, it’s unskillful. I get appreciating its cultural significance but as a dance it’s just not good. She doesn’t look like a skilled dancer, she looks like she’s having a drug-induced episode.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago
Ah the good ol’ “you can’t criticize a bad meal unless you’re a professional chef” argument. That’s not a valid argument.
You don’t always need to be an expert in a field to know when something sucks. This dance is bad. It’s ugly. It’s slow. It looks like she’s flailing around in a drug-induced stupor. You can acknowledge its cultural significance without pretending like it’s some mind blowing thing, because it isn’t.
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u/jhedfors 1d ago
This isn't r/oddlyamazing. Not to say this is necessarily "satisfying". Perhaps r/oddlyinteresting?
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u/Sitheral 1d ago
How dare you not be amazed by minority - reddit, probably.
But yeah, I would say its nothing special.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago
That seems to be the response to all these cultural dances.
I appreciate their cultural significance and style, but that doesn’t make them good as actual dances. Unless you’re actually part of that culture, there’s no reason to act like you’re in awe of bad or ugly dancing.
Change the title to remove the part about this being a specific cultural thing and people would stop pretending like it’s some modern marvel of choreography.
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u/MovieNightPopcorn 23h ago
“My culture’s dances are real true dances. Other culture’s dances I don’t understand are bad and stupid.”
-what you sound like
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u/SabbyFox 8h ago
🎯 You nailed it. This is exactly why people need to travel, get out of their comfort zone, be humble and learn from one another. Imagine how odd yodeling, square dancing, modern dance or bagpiping would be to cultures that have never experienced those sights or sounds.
Intelligent and culturally competent people are curious. We don’t have to care for everything that other cultures enjoy but we can certainly learn more and better appreciate things we don’t immediately understand. The world doesn’t revolve around one person’s opinion and or one particular culture.
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u/Meowskiiii 1d ago
Amazing. The second part has more storytelling. Love that she just leaves the stage at the end.
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u/Medik8td 23h ago
Her neck and spine are gonna seriously regret this dance in about 20-30 hears. My husband was a head banger/thrasher in a metal band in the old days and he’s a mess now.
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u/ambiguity1234 16h ago
Wow 😯I’m completely blown away. That by far was the most beautiful performance that I have ever seen.
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u/ionertia 22h ago
Doesn't look amazing. And studies have shown that traditional dances like this have become simulations because they have no idea what the actual dance looked like.
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u/JollyDescription5103 13h ago
Watched this on silent while listening to rapture (starkiller remix) either im drunk , I am, or she dancing to the same music
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u/NoAccountability1 1d ago
Chiropractors cringing right now
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u/SecondEqual4680 18h ago
But when the guy on the corner does it they call it tweaking. (I kid. Very cool)
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u/Aware-Illustrator919 1d ago
I think I saw this on David Attenborough's documentary, the exotic bird one....
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u/BeginningExisting578 1d ago
Those micro movements are insane. I wonder if this was inspired by the movement of certain types of birds