Red Deer’s ever-sunny street performer Spandy Andy is co-starring in another video-gone-viral.
The four-minute clip, Happiest Street Performer in the World Shown Up by Little Guy, has racked up more than a million YouTube views. It shows the colourfully clad Andy dancing with abandon along with a fleet-footed toddler at a Scottish fringe festival.
The Huffington Post calls it “the greatest show ever,” while the Daily Mail online proclaims “Is this the most joyful street performance ever?”
The video starts with Spandy Andy dancing in the rain before a crowd of onlookers at the Edinburgh festival in the summer of 2012.
The veteran street performer notices a tyke bopping along to the music at the sidelines. Andy approaches him, gives the kid a high five and waves him encouragingly into the dance.
The little guy proceeds to twirl and weave around like nobody’s business. For more than three minutes, the toddler busts freestyling moves that require both fancy footwork and waving motions with his arms.
At one point, Spandy Andy tries to wrap up the dance but the kid just won’t quit. Andy watches the tyke with seeming dumbfounded admiration, then shrugs and continues dancing.
At the end of their impromptu pairs routine, performed to We No Speak Americano by Yolanda Be Cool, Spandy Andy goes to his tips jar and hands the toddler a coin from it.
Spandy Andy Rimer, who grew up in Red Deer but lives in Vancouver when he isn’t travelling the globe, said this latest video caught him by surprise.
While it was filmed by an onlooker more than a year and a half ago, it didn’t catch on until the end of 2013. Andy heard popular sites such as the CHIVE and MailOnline put the video directly onto their websites, and people have been sharing it through social media.
He had to watch it to see what the fuss was about.
Andy believes the appeal is that the little boy was dancing like no one was watching. “I love seeing kids just let loose and have fun with me during my performances ... I wish more adults would do the same.”
This isn’t the first time Spandy Andy has appeared in a viral video. Last January, his gutsy performance at St. Kilda Beach in Melbourne, Australia, produced more than five million views.
In that more adult-themed video, the compact street performer is seen doing some twerking, hip thrusting and imitating a seagull to Sexy and I Know It by LMFAO, as beach-goers cheer him on.
Spandy Andy has appeared on the TV shows So You Think You Can Dance Canada, Wipeout Canada and was proclaimed Canada’s Freshest Dancer in 2009 at the Colgate MaxFresh Competition in Toronto, where he won $10,000.
He is next planning to return to Australia before heading to Russia to street dance during the Olympic Games.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com