Evolution of Dance
One man, a black T-shirt, a spotlight, and a six-minute journey through decades of dance moves. Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" was the video everyone forwarded to everyone else — proof that YouTube could make a star out of anybody with an idea and a camcorder.
On April 6, 2006, motivational speaker and comedian Judson Laipply, from Ohio, uploaded a clip of his live stage routine to YouTube: a six-minute medley of dance moves through 32 songs spanning 1956 to 2004 — Elvis through the Twist, disco, the Robot, and hip-hop — performed by one man in a black T-shirt under a single spotlight. He had been doing the routine live since 2003, before YouTube existed. Uploading it meant it could suddenly be watched by everyone, instantly, and forwarded to people who would never see it on a stage.
It became the defining video of YouTube's early era — the most-viewed video on the entire site across three separate periods between May 2006 and October 2009, and for a 21-day stretch in June and July 2006 his channel was the most subscribed on all of YouTube. For an enormous number of people it was the first viral video anyone ever sent them, the original 'have you seen this?' link. A sequel, Evolution of Dance 2, followed in December 2008, but the original never needed one — it had already become the proof of concept for internet fame itself.
Similar items
Early YouTube
The video platform that made viral content a daily ritual. YouTube launched in 2005 as low-res, ad-free, and gloriously weird—a space where "Lazy Sunday," "Chocolate Rain," and "Charlie Bit My Finger" became the lingua franca of internet culture.
Numa Numa
One of the internet's first viral megahits: a webcam clip of a New Jersey teenager lip-syncing and flailing joyfully to a Moldovan pop song. Gary Brolsma's "Numa Numa Dance" spread to hundreds of millions of views — and it happened before YouTube even existed.
Charlie Bit My Finger
A dad filming his toddlers in England. The youngest bites the oldest's finger. "Ouch, Charlie! Charlie, that really hurt!" The giggle that followed became the most-viewed video on all of YouTube — and held the crown into 2011.
Dramatic Chipmunk
A prairie dog — not actually a chipmunk — whips its head toward the camera in slow menace, scored with a sinister orchestral sting from a 1974 Mel Brooks film. Five seconds of pure reaction gold that became the internet's shorthand for "something just happened."