Diversity – Dance Fitness Fusion

Diversity are a dance troupe fronted by Ashley Banjo whose five million members include Jordan, Sam, Mitchell, Ashton, Ian, Jamie, Matthew, Perri, Warren, Ike, Terry, Rod, Jane, Freddie, Mary, Mungo, Midge, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Tich, George and Timmy the Dog.

They won Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 beating Susan Boyle into second place. There was clearly talent to spare that year unlike a few years later when the competition was won by a dancing dog. I saw Ashleigh and Pudsey in pantomime last year, you know. Twice. I sat through a show where the biggest name on the bill was a dog who won a talent show and thought, “Yes I could go through that all over again.”

It’s like I have no taste or shame whatsoever

This DVD was released in 2010 soon after their win. The guys don’t seem to have slowed down any since then, to be honest. Unlike most of the c-listers reviewed here, Diversity’s website appears to be updated every 30 seconds or so with news of all their cool new activities.

Like this, for example. This is no common-or-garden block party. It's ultimate.



Diversity don’t muck about when it comes to putting workouts together either. There are loads of sections here. Every dance has an easy and a hard version and an optional tutorial for both versions. You’d be mad if you tried to go ahead with the dances without Ashley’s tutorial though. Unless you just wanted to watch the dances with no intention of participating. Which come to think of it might be the less mad option.

That way you could just appreciate their choreographed coolness without having to worry about tripping over your own feet or putting your back out. Impressively, the fact that the crotch of their trousers are somewhere round their knees doesn’t seem to  hamper their movements any.

You're not making life easy for yourselves, you know, boys.

Different members of the troupe join in for different bits of the workout. The sections include Funky Fusion, Break Down and Fast and Slow. Each dance has its own t-shirt colour: blue for funky fusion, red for the breakdown, lilac for the tutorials and so on.

Ashley Banjo. A man with a t-shirt to match his every mood. 

At the end the workouts there is an extra dance routine called “Three Elements” where they mix up different moves – and t-shirts - from each of the sections

It’s a riot of colour!

Best Bit
Diversity are great fun to watch. They hurl themselves around like they have evolved to the point where they use a different method of propulsion to normal humans with a  fairly relaxed attitude to the laws of gravity. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope where the bits inside consist of human bodies and Reebok trainers.

Worst Bit

I’m not sure how well any of this works as actual dance instruction. Ashley rattles through the instructions at break-neck speed while the cameramen seem committed to including the largest possible number of arty swooping shots and the smallest number of full body shots which allow us to see the dancers’ feet. The whole thing seemed baffling to me. But then I did resolutely ignore Ashley’s advice to pause and re-watch any parts I wasn’t sure of. The thing would have taken weeks to get though if I’d done that.

Bending doesn't really work that way for me. Or balance.

Would I do this Workout again?

Oh man, the Diversity workout is not for me. It’s for cool funky young types who look good in snap-backs and three-quarter-length shorts. The sort of people who should be doing this workout are probably super-fit already. What with all the aggressive skating, freerunning and then shooting some b-ball outside of the school.

Banjo looks exhausted! What hope is there for mortal folk?

These workouts are just not appropriate for someone who has the same Body fat percentage as a cheese toastie.

Susan Boyle didn’t release a workout DVD, thank goodness. It would have made as much sense as Diversity singing Mull of Kintyre at the Queen’s Jubilee Pageant. Still, if the “I Dreamed a Dream ... of Getting Fit!” workout did exist, I think I would be rather better suited to it than I was this one.

You Got Served – Take it to the Streets

You Got Served is a 2004 film about competitive street dancing  in Los Angeles and not – as you might have a supposed -  a reboot of 1970s comedy Are you being served? There is a disappointing absence of lilac haired old ladies making veiled vagina references

Not the same thing at all

 

What the film does have, though, is an abundance of cool dance moves. So if cool dance moves were what  you were after then this was the very film for you. Particularly if you were none too bothered about convincing acting or a decent plot.

And if after watching it, you walked away thinking “Man, I’d love to dance like that. If only the choreographer would give me step-by-step instructions on how to dance like David and Elgin and their crew” then, boy, were you in luck. They totally had your back, bro.

This could be you

You Got Served: Take it to the streets was released the same year and is fronted by the film’s choreographer Dave Scott who invites you to “Learn the Dance Moves Step by Step”

Dave is joined by the coolest bunch of people you ever saw. Dave’s an unbelievably cool guy himself.  Trainers on workout DVDs always try to act cool but you can usually see through their bravado to the panicked desperate persona beneath. Not so, Dave. He got nothing to prove to nobody, He probably didn’t even need to make this DVD he just did it to give share the street dancing love with the little guy. He’s that kind of badass.

Choreographers do not get any cooler than this.

All Dave’s crew are dancers from the movie. This includes Robert James Hoffman III who played the bad guy’s sidekick, Max. Unfortunately RJHIII is by far and away the least cool guy there. And not just because he’s white. Dante next to him probably displays more attitude cleaning his teeth than young Mr III does busting his very best shapes.

But then Dante wasn't in She's the Man so Rob probably wins after all

 

The DVD starts off with a warm-up which requires greater flexibility and quicker reactions than most celebrity workout DVDs do in their entirety. There are two dance routines based on particular dances from the movie as well as an extra one that Dave made up just for us. Because he loves us.

The dance instructions basically can be broken down to this: (1) Do a million different things quickly and in succession. (2) Look cool while you’re doing it. I didn’t excel at this.

At the beginning of the third dance routine, Dave starts his introduction when, oh my goodness, who should turn up all unexpectedly but Chris Jones or “Chris Jones!  Christopher Jones from the movie. Hey, my man.” as Dave greets him. To be fair Jones’ mum probably welcomes him the same way when he nips home for Sunday lunch. Jones played Wade the spiky haired nemesis of the film’s main characters. He’s still sporting the same Dragon Ball Z hairstyle in this which means he’s either turned up in character or he actually does have hair like that.

Spot the difference

The film’s two leading actors, Omari Grandberry and Marques Houston bust some freestyle moves on the  DVD extras luckily for the DVD producers who can then stick the most famous guys on the box with gay abandon.

Difficulty Level
This was insane. Crazy, crazy difficult.  You might think it was difficult learning all the moves to Hannah Montana’s Hoedown Throwdown. And you’d be right hypothetical reader, it was. But it’s got nothing on this.  There are eight million different moves for each dance and they all involve weird things like pretending to pull someone’s trousers down.

Best Bit

The big freestyle party at the end. Even the DJ Richard gets to show us his dance moves. Robert III seems to be doing an impression of a velociraptor because why not.

Would I do this workout again?

I would have to watch this many, many, many times in order to have a hope of doing these dance moves in vaguely the right times. Literally hundreds. I’m not sure where I would find the time. There is an interview with Chris Stokes, the director of the original film on the DVD extras. He tells us we can achieve anything we set our minds to and we should never let anyone else get the way of our dreams. Which is nice but I still think I may have to shelve my ambitions of becoming a freestyling hip-hop street dancer.  I’m not entirely sure I have what it takes to pop, lock, flip freeze and do that thing where you spin on your head for ages. It’s a tragic loss for the world, I know. In a very real sense, we all got served.