Scott Pankey, a drama and technology teacher at New Tech High School in Dallas, Texas, caused quite a stir a few years ago. He and his pupils put on one of the most amazing dance displays we’ve ever seen. If you like music, you should definitely check it out.
Their performance video was uploaded to YouTube in January 2015 and has already been viewed over 14 million times.
It transports us back to a simpler, more regular time when schools were still open and life went on as usual.
Almost the entire school participated in the dance!
Over 200 students took to the corridors and classrooms, blasting Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” over and over until they perfected all of the routines.
Pankey first heard the song during his Christmas vacation.
He connected with it right away.
“I heard the song and fell in love with it,” Pankey told 13WMAZ. “I got up and started dancing in my living room.”
Pankey already knew what his next project would be when classes resumed after the break. He decided that since it was a technological high school, he’d have the students create an Uptown Funk video for YouTube instead of just doing a dance for friends and family.
“They’re engineering students.” The theater is a challenge for them. “I told them we were going to rehearse for the next three weeks,” Pankey recalled.
It took a lot of effort and meticulous preparation.
After all, most technology students aren’t thinking about dancing. He did, however, motivate them to give it their all by establishing an easily attainable end objective for the video production.
“I told them, ‘Guys, we’re going to have 1,000 hits,’” Pankey recalled.
One thousand is also the approximate number of Facebook friends Pankey has. He reasoned that, worst-case scenario, he could convince some of them to watch the video.
However, the footage was far beyond his greatest expectations.
It earned over one million views on the first day it was posted online! The story quickly went viral when it was picked up by other news outlets. Michelle Obama and Jill Biden both tweeted about the dance, and Bruno Mars himself tweeted about it.
The answer utterly stunned Pankey and his students.
“They were taken aback.” We were getting emails from people all around the world… “It was a major epiphany for them about the influence they may have on the world,” Pankey said.
They couldn’t believe it. However, after you view the video, it’s clear to see why so many people shared it.
Pankey is seated at his desk in his school as the video begins.
The music then starts playing, and he starts dancing to the beat.
He is soon joined in the corridor by some female pupils.
As Pankey walks across the campus, he encounters more and more groups of students, each of which is doing a distinct funky dance routine.
It’s amazing to witness.
The most astounding aspect, though, is how they captured it.
The entire performance is shot in one continuous take, following Pankey around the hallways. As the dance takes place, the camera pans around the school, following the action. Slowly but steadily, the pupils all demonstrated and followed through with their individual exercises.
Finally, for the climax, a big swarm of students floods the stairway.
Everyone celebrates by throwing their hands in the air and smiling broadly.
The entire routine appears to be quite professional. Pankey, on the other hand, claimed that it wasn’t because of his significant dancing background. Except for a brief clogging session at Lees-McRae College, he had no formal dance instruction at the time.
The great kids that showed up day after day to master the routine deserve the majority of the credit. They performed an outstanding job. They surely have some nice maneuvers for students of technology!
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