| Stop Press: Congratulations to Museum Victoria for an impressive victory in Museum Dance Off 3!! When voting was complete Museum Victoria had amassed 79,090 votes against Chrysler Museum’s 66,169 votes. Hope everyone has started learning their steps for next year. |
Steph Harmon, Can’t touch this: third annual Museum Dance-Off reaches thrilling finale, The Guardian, 12 May 2016
If you made a Venn diagram of museum staffers on the one hand and dance enthusiasts on the other, the overlap would have to be fairly minimal – but for those within that tiny intersection, this is a huge week.
On Thursday, after a gruelling international online competition which saw 35 entries whittled down to two finalists, Museum Victoria in Australia and Virginia’s Chrysler Museum of Art will compete for a coveted title: the third annual Museum Dance-Off world championship.
The rules are simple: any organisation in the Glam (Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum) family can submit a video dance, set to music; entries should be between two and five minutes; and anyone involved in the institution – staff, volunteers, interns or visitors – can take part.
And thus arrives an unlikely new genre of YouTube video: lovably awkward museum staffers dancing with reckless abandon among multi-million-dollar collections.
Museum Victoria’s submission has made it to the grand final “Thunderdome” round on Thursday, and the staff are abuzz.
“It’s a very important achievement,” deadpans Helen Privett, the museum’s conservation manager-cum-dance captain. “We’re all excited about it, to be truthfully honest. Everyone I’ve spoken to has mentioned it.”
