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Hip-Hop Expert on 'Wobbling' Quinn and 'Flapping' Rauner: 'There's Hope'

By Mark Konkol | August 26, 2014 8:55am
 At Sunday's watch party for the Little League World Series, Pat Quin and Bruce Rauner hit the dance floor.
At Sunday's watch party for the Little League World Series, Pat Quin and Bruce Rauner hit the dance floor.
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DNAinfo/Josh McGhee

WEST PULLMAN — There's a 100 percent chance that come November, Illinois will elect a governor who can't dance.

This major political development became alarmingly apparent last weekend when Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn and his challenger, Republican Bruce Rauner, attempted to get their groove on while celebrating with Jackie Robinson West fans on the South Side.

Intrepid DNAinfo Chicago reporter Josh McGhee caught their gyrations on video for all of us to enjoy.

After I stopped laughing, I called Hyde Park choreographer Carlton Bradley, an expert on hip-hop and jazz dancing, to give voters insight on exactly how Illinois voters should consider the moves these gubernatorial candidates displayed.

The good news, Bradley said, is that both men appear to have rhythm.

"And what I mean by that is that it's clear they heard sound vibrations and they made movements," he said. "Now, I'm not sure what kind of movements they were, but they did move."

I asked him to break it down for the voters and offer the political opponents any tips he thought might help the two be less embarrassing on the dance floor in the future.

Bradley said that Quinn was "definitely trying to follow along, but appeared unsure about which direction to go."

Bradley assured me he was talking about Quinn's dance moves, and not his past political performance.

"The song that was playing was 'The Wobble.' He was wobbling," Bradley said. "But it was sort of like watching the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man or a human water balloon."

 

Despite the harsh criticism, however, Quinn might be able to turn things around.

"I think that he's not hopeless," Bradley said. "If he just expresses himself as an individual I think he'll figure it out, eventually."

Rauner, Bradley said, also displayed rhythm, sort of.

"Now he was trying to do 'The Dougie,' and I give it to him — he did get low at one point, but not low enough," Bradley said. "He was basically doing the Funky Chicken, his arms flapping everywhere."

 

As a point of reference, "The Dougie" is a hip-hop dance move performed by moving your body in a "shimmy style" and passing a hand "through or near the hair on one's own head," according to Wikipedia.

During Rauner's Dougie attempt Rauner was "flapping away like he was trying to get out of there," Bradley said. "You could see in his eyes that he wanted to be grooving, but it wasn't registering with his body. The look on his face was saying one thing, and his body was doing something else."

Bradley, who operates his namesake dance company at Dance Connection studio in Roscoe Village, clarified that he was indeed alluding to Rauner's dance moves, not his not campaign ads.

He offered Rauner two dance tips: Stop flapping and start grooving. And if you get low, make sure you can get back up.

I asked Bradley if there was any chance that Quinn and Rauner could one day shake it to hip-hop songs in public without embarrassing the citizens of Illinois.

"Well, hip-hop dance is about freedom of expression, being yourself. It came from the street. … It started with a boom box, cardboard and dancers developing their own style," he said.

When I told him he wasn't answering the question, Bradley kindly offered a fair, unbiased assessment.

"Well, you know," he said, "they say there's hope for everyone."

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