Dancing Russian Kid / Dancing Romani Kid

About

Dancing Russian Kid, also known as Dancing Romani Kid or Dancing Gypsy Kid, is a viral video of a young boy wearing sunglasses dancing in a nightclub surrounded by adult party-goers. The clip was first posted to YouTube in late 2011 under the title "Gypsy kid dancing at club can't be bothered 1997" and went viral on the internet through remixes where users set the video to various music in the following years.

Origin

On September 29th, 2011, the YouTube^[1] account "Уникальное видео из 90-х и нулевых!" (which translates to "Unique Videos From The 90s and 00s") posted a video titled, "Gypsy kid dancing at club can't be bothered. 1997." The video of the dancing kid accumulated over 29 million views and 1 million likes in roughly 11 years (seen below).

This description of the video contained a link to an interview in a separate YouTube^[2] video with the same boy, seen in the club wearing all black. The interviewer asks him if he has a girlfriend he wants to send a greeting to, to which he replies, "I already did, she's right here." The interview clip gathered over 8 million views and 100,000 likes in ten years (seen below, left). The backing track song in the original video is "The Swing Man" by Patrick Lindsay (seen below, right).^[3]

Identity

There is speculation as to whether the person in the video is a little boy or a person with dwarfism.^[1] The text overlay in the interview clip confirms that the video was recorded in a nightclub in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1997.^[2] Both the interviewer and his subject speak Russian with a distinctive Ukrainian accent. The club, Dvushka, was located at Park Mashynobudivnykiv in Kharkiv and has since been replaced with a club named Heat.

Spread

Over the following years, the viral video continued to spread online as it was reposted to other sites and platforms. For example, on June 5th, 2013, Redditor^[4] Ursamoi posted the original unedited YouTube video to the /r/videos subreddit under the title "Russian kid at the disco can't be bothered giving any f---s" and received over 800 upvotes in nine years (screenshot shown below).

On September 9th, 2014, YouTuber^[5] 4 Dub Ent posted a remixed example of the video titled "Russian Kid Dancing In The Club Goin Up On A Tuesday Night," and received over 1 million views and 14,000 likes in roughly eight years (seen below). The video uses audio from the song "Tuesday" by ILoveMakonnen.

Internet users increasingly made edits of the dancing kid set to various songs in the following years, with several videos making velocity edits of the original clip. For example, the velocity edit set to a remix of "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People was posted on September 29th, 2019, by YouTuber^[6] Tim Lepage and gathered over 500,000 views in roughly three years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References