‘Dancing Dude’ impresses audiences with unique style, intense passion for music
For Neil Cole, it all started with N*Sync on a warm, September day.
While walking with a friend, Cole was listening to his iPod. When the beats of “Dirty Pop” hit his eardrums, his life changed. And with that change, the Dancing Dude at UT was born.
“When the song came on, I just started dancing to it,” Cole said. “I stopped and looked over at my friend and asked if, you know, it was just terrible, and if I should never do that again. And he looked at me and said, ‘It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen.’ And with that I thought I could do this and kept dancing ever since.”
Cole, a freshman from Nashville with dreams of being an architect, was not a dancer before this moment. In fact, despite a deep love of music stemming from his time in his high school’s band, Cole said that in high school he never danced.
“I didn’t do this at all in high school,” he said. “When my friends saw the videos of me dancing on the Internet, they were all like, ‘This is not the same guy. He’s changed.’ And, honestly, I think I have.”
In those high school days, Cole described himself as being slightly introverted and definitely not confident enough to do what he does today.
“I used to be real closed off,” Cole said. “Then I get here and start dancing. I just don’t think about it. And people come over and say hey to me, and it’s really helped me open up.”
While he has no set routine, Cole said that he likes to dance around two to three hours per day, depending on his mood. On bad days, of which he has only had two so far, Cole might not dance at all, while on the better days, his dancing can go as long as four hours, with no set location.
“I like to dance the most when I’m eating,” Cole said. “People see me all the time in the cafeterias and the food courts. I used to dance to class, but I stopped because I’m not really a morning person.”
It is at those lunchtime dances that Cole usually draws his largest audiences and admirers.
“I see him dancing around Presidential Court, and I got a lot of respect for him,” Denis Korobkov, an undecided freshman, said. “He doesn’t care what people think about him, he just does his thing. People will laugh or look and gawk, but he just dances and does what he wants to do. I wish I had moves like him.”
While Cole’s initial popularity came through occasional sightings and by word-of-mouth, his celebrity status rose with the beginning of his Facebook fan page, which is titled “Dancing Dude at UTK.”
Since its inception earlier this fall, his page has swollen to encompass more than 1,400 fans. Its contents include not only the occasional status update from Cole himself on his life, but also new videos and songs that he has been dancing to lately. Currently, his top-10 songs list is headed by “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love Again — Hyper Crush Remix.”
Regardless of the number of fans he has, Cole does not dance for notoriety or notice. Instead, Cole dances for one simple reason: He loves it.
“Dance is a passion of mine,” Cole said. “I love to do it, and when I hear something with a good beat I just can’t help dancing.”
Cole’s deep-seated interest in dance has given him a unique approach to his moves. While some will boast of deep repertoires and complicated steps, Cole’s movements come from a “connect-the-dots”-like system in his head.
“When I pick up the rhythm, the beat starts to move me,” Cole said. “I start moving, and I take these mental snapshots of where I want my body to look like at the end of each move. And then I kind of go through the photos and get to that pose. In the end, wherever my body goes is how I move.”
Cole’s ultimate goal with dance is to get others to dance with him. While Cole can see why some might be too afraid to take the first step, that does not deter him from hoping they will follow his lead.
“If everyone in one of my classes just got up and danced with me, well, that would just be amazing,” Cole said.
While it might take awhile for the rest of campus to catch up with his goals, Cole will still keep dancing. And there’s a good chance one of the songs he’s dancing to is “Dirty Pop.”
