MSO started Global Shuffle in 2007, as a fight back to a campaign to Ban the Melbourne Shuffle
Naturally shufflers went berzerk and staged protest boycotts of the Sydney club owner who wanted to ban the Shuffle. He said Shufflers took up too much room on the dance floor. Club owners prefer to have people standing on the dance floor drinking alcohol, they make more money that way.
So we set the date 17 May 2008 as a challenge to this fool, to prove that Shufflers were no push-over, and there was no way he could ban Shufflers shuffling. We would defiantly shuffle where ever we were around the world on that day, banned or not.
Shufflers started to avoid clubs in general that didn't allow Shuffling on the dance floors as a protest too. Everybody just started having meet-ups in public parks, malls, carparks all the free places. That really pissed off the club owners, they had no control over us, and others were avoiding clubs in protest to support us. The clubs were loosing lots of money.
The Sydney club owner fell out of favour very quickly as other Sydney club owners abandoned him, and publicly announced their support for Shufflers and Shuffling. All of the calling him an idiot.
By the time 17 May 2008 rolled around, the anti-Shuffle guys club had closed, and nobody has heard of him since.
About 4 weeks before 17 May 2008, a young lady named Jancis from Singapore contacted me to see if she could hold an official Global Shuffle meet-up event in Singapore. It would also be Singapore's first official Shuffle meet-up.
There wasn't much time, so we worked really hard and fast getting proper permission etc to hold an outdoor meet-up. In Melbourne we just go out and do it, but Singapore is a little different with that sort of thing ;) So we did the right thing, we didn't want anybody having any excuse to ban shuffling...anywhere.
So 4 weeks later Jancis and her fantastic SG crew staged the 1st GLOBAL SHUFFLE DAY 17 May 2008.
Here's the official video (with SG officials credits) You'll see quite a few from Shifter Hardstyle Prodigy there too. It was a good occasion for them to cross the border from JB Malaysia and meet-up with the Singapore Shufflers. Shufflers support each other regardless of what crew, religion, language or nationality they are.
Global Shuffle Day became our Victory dance, the Shuffle survived and is now going stronger than ever!
I had many people contact me afterwards about what the next Global Shuffle project was.
So after some chat, we started working on a documentary dvd about the Melbourne Shuffle from it's first steps in 1990 to the Global scene it has become today. The dvd documentary is called GLOBAL SHUFFLE. It will be released in March 2010, to mark 20 years of the Melbourne Shuffle.
Shufflers from around the world are contributing to documentary, with interviews and shufflers showing us around their towns and their favourite shuffle spots, sneak peeks at www.globalshuffle.com
In the mean time we are still doing Global Shuffle Day as a celebration (rather than a protest) each year 17 May or a date close to that on a weekend.
Here's some great vids of Global Shuffle Day (GSD) 2009 in Singapore.
- If you'd like to do an official Global Shuffle Day event in your town, any where in the world next year 2010 (20th anniversary of the birth of the Melbourne Shuffle) ... contact Garry with your ideas on cybafaeries@gmail.com
HSRockerz at Global Shuffle Day Singapore
SDF Short Rocks At GSD
simple short rawk in GSD '09
Global Shuffle Day 2009 |Officially Started|
Posts
