LOS ANGELES – Ryan Guzman and Briana Evigan have been in a few of the “Step Up” movies between them, so maybe they should have the say in which locale the franchise features in next. The new sequel, “Step Up: All In,” takes place in Las Vegas, for a fictional crew talent competition reality show.

In our interview recently, Guzman and Evigan suggested some cool new haunts — maybe Japan, for instance — but how about Antarctica and Greenland, too?

OK, so maybe they shouldn't have final say.

Kidding aside, the dancing duo talked about their core expertise, and the terrible trends that sometimes come out of it.

“Stop 'Gangnam Style' now,” Guzman pleaded, as he and his co-star said they've had to learn and then perform the horsey side-dance over and over again.

Evigan said she's appalled the twerking just became a “thing.” And that it's even called twerking. “It's butt-shaking,” she said. “I learned to twerk upside-down against the wall when I was 12 years old.”

Watch the full interview above, as Guzman talks his newly re-invented Rio for the “Jem and the Holograms” movie and how “The Ultimate Fighter” is the ultimate reality show, and why Evigan didn't take up the reins on the one f-bomb this PG-13 flick is allowed.

“Step Up: All In” is in theaters Friday (Aug. 8).

Live With Kelly and Michael

Helen Mirren turned 69 last week. Let that sink in for a moment as you watch this video of her twerking on Live With Kelly and Michael with the newly-single-because-of-a-prenup-dispute Michael Strahan.

Listen, I’m not into gerophilia or anything, but if Helen Mirren walked into a bar, I’d probably put the moves on her. No, actually, I’d do more than that. I’d make sweet, sweet love to her because damn, did you see those hips? Helen Mirren’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Yeah, like you’re not going to watch this GIF all day. Please.

Live With Kelly and Michael

Twerking over, everyone go home. Dame Helen Mirren has outclassed us all.

On Aug 5, Dame Mirren was a guest on Live with Kelly and Michael, ostensibly to promote her new film “The Hundred-Foot Journey.” But how in good conscience could Michael and guest host Maria Menounos pass up the opportunity to get Mirren to shake it on national morning television?

Of course we all should collectively thank Harvard University for bestowing us with this gift. If not for the Hasty Pudding Theatrical Society, humanity might have continued on in perpetuity without Mirren's classy gyrations. 

While accepting the award for Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year in January, Mirren also accepted the challenge to play charades with the Queens of England. Bless you, whoever came up with these cue cards. Watch the entire spectacle play out below!

H/T [Vulture]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case, then this GIF is worth at least 1 million. There’s nothing more to say here. Let that GIF marinate for a few hours.

Liveleak

Youtube

There’s a twerking championship in the UK that was sponsored by Nicki Minaj? There is a twerking championship in the UK that was sponsored by Nicki Minaj.

Apparently there was one last year too, the more you know. Below are the video highlights of this year’s event which featured such classics as the pop and jiggle round, the upside down round and of course the domination round where you get to do all your p-popping on top of a willing partner. Oh and then the finale, a round dedicated to Nicki’s “Anaconda” as we all wait patiently for the video.

In the end a nice young lady with pink hair and a mask won the 1,000 pound cash prize but you stopped reading and pressed play a paragraph ago so who cares.

H/T: JumpOff.TV

After showing off a year”s worth of ass in one day with her video for “Anaconda,” Nicki Minaj keeps it her most formidable asset out of sight in her cameo on Juicy J”s “Low” video and leaves the twerking to others.

Minaj comes in around 1:30 on the tune. Declaring she”s “fly every day,” she delivers a 40-second X-rated rhyme dressed relatively demurely in a black, then white, dress. Even if you're not a Minaj fan, you have to admire her sheer ubiquity these days, between her own “Anaconda,”  “Bang Bang” with Jessie J and Ariana Grande, Beyonce's remix of “Flawless” and now this…

Juicy J”s low voice combined with a hypnotic beat creates a slinky tune, as he, like Kelly Rowland earlier this year, talks about liking his “kisses down low.” Hey, at least he's practicing safe sex, as he tells us the only thing in his suitcase is condoms.

In addition to Minaj, Juicy J also enlists the aid of Lil Bibby and Young Thug.

Juicy J is up for two MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday for his feature on Katy Perry's “Dark Horse.”

YOUTUBE

Lest you think Footloose takes place in a fictional land where Bacon is a person and not a delicious meat, a high school principal in Bennington, Vermont, has cancelled the homecoming dance because the dang kids won’t stop twerking. Let’s hear it for the butts. Things are getting so out of control, Principal Sue Maguire even wrote an op-ed in the local newspaper, the Vermont version of the Drudge Siren.

Over the past couple of years, since Miley Cyrus took the stage “twerking” at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, our students’ dancing behavior has crossed the line of what we can condone as appropriate behavior at a school. Twerking is dancing to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving a low squatting stance and thrusting movements. Students do not face one another or remain with the same person for the length of the song.

If you haven’t seen twerking, I would encourage you to research this online. (Via)

The person who researches “twerking” is the same SOB who thinks 4chan is a person.

As we have researched this issue, we have learned that communities across the nation are struggling to find the balance between free expression and appropriate school behavior at dances. In speaking with other school administrators, they have informed us that dances have been canceled in other high schools in our state and in nearby Massachusetts and New York.

Everything else planned for homecoming is continuing. We plan on having spirit week, the pep rally, and of course, the homecoming game. (Via)

Looks like H. Jon Benjamin needs to do another Kickstater, this time to bring Kenny Loggins to Bennington, where he can teach Principal Maguire the art of dancing…and love.

The Bennington Banner via Gawker

Stock Image via Getty

Miley Cyrus is being “risque” again, everybody. During a performance in Monterrey, Mexico, this week, to celebrate Mexico’s Independence Day, Miley — who is seen above dressed like Big Bird while her dancers portrayed chickens with egg boobs — had one of her dancers spank her ass with the Mexican flag while she twerked against it. For some weird reason Mexican officials are not seeing this as the compliment it obviously is and are now demanding satisfaction.

Local lawmaker Francisco Trevino said that the Nuevo Leon state legislature had approved a warrant for the Interior Ministry to enforce the law on use of the flag.

She or her team could be fined up to the equivalent of around $1,200 or be detained for 36 hours, Trevino said.

Mexican authorities are often sensitive toward signs of disrespect for national symbols. In 2008, singer Paulina Rubio was fined for posing without clothes but wrapped in the country’s flag.

I’m sure Miley can probably afford the $1,200 (I mean, that’s what — $20 American?) but Mexican jail is no joke, as people tend to not ever be seen again after entering it. So, good job, Miley Cyrus. I hope your time in Mexico was enjoyable because you should probably never go there again. And hey, just throwing it out there, but here’s a good idea for if you ever decide to tour the middle east: A life-size Muhammad doll would also be a really cool thing to twerk on. That one’s on the house.

(Via Huffington Post)

“Prepare the audience for maximum impact,” Jennifer Lopez warns in the opening, eternal seconds of her “Booty” video with Iggy Azalea.

But how quickly could we forget the maximum impact of another booty-centric, twerking, girl-on-girl music video recently, Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda?”

Watch each, and below I make an analytical comparison — a booty battle if you will — of what it is to see two female superstars shake their famous derrieres.

“Booty” has an inordinate amount of dancing booties without heads or faces in the frame. This may not mean much on face (derp!) value, but the literal removal of the personal, the name to a body, is a disembodiment. The interchangeability of the women renders the bodies as objects.

I would contend there is an important distinction here: that Iggy Azalea and Jennifer Lopez are, in no way, the same person.

Watch Nicki Minaj's eye contact with the camera, and the confrontational eye contact between the dancers and her and the dancers. Lopez uses lots of eye contact with the camera, but — again — that whole no-face-all-body thing. She and Azalea have lots of contact, but not of the eye variety.

The women with the big booties in J-Lo's song are referred to as Her, or She. Nicki Minaj is all about the “me.” Lyrically compare the first person versus the third person.

Lyrics in “Booty”: “So much booty, she could supply the demand / I wanna take that big ‘ol booty shopping at the mall / I wanna pick it up and put that booty in my car… Have you seen her on the dance floor… All the sexy girls in the party / Go and grab a man, bring him to the dance floor.”

Lyrics in “Anaconda”: “He can tell I ain't missing no meals / Come through and f*ck him in my automobile… Yeah, he love this fat ass Yeah! This one is for my bitches with a fat ass in the f*cking club.”

The object “booty” is not Lopez'. She is admiring others' and gazing at them on other people, while she is flaunting her own for you, a disconnect between voice and performance. She has become sole proprietor of the booty commodities on the dance exchange floor, others' booty as objects one can load into a car.

Minaj, meanwhile, has agency over her own “fat ass” and she will f*ck you in her own car, thankyouverymuch. And she will join the rest of “you” (you know who you are) on the floor momentarily.

This. This cringe-worthy line in “Booty”: “It”s his birthday, give him what he ask for
(Let me show you how to do it).” Girl, it's YOUR birthday, and you should get what YOU ask for. Lopez again takes the POV of the watcher, and then issues the instruction. She is both the objectifier and the object, which under other circumstances could be quite interesting, but packaged in a white swimsuit in a room that always rains.

Visually, these videos are far apart. Minaj's island of misfit girls is playful, hypercolor, cartoonish; she cracks fun at workout videos, and French maid costumes, and Tarzan/Katy Perry's “Roar.” The lighting gets serious and the costumes subdue when she's giving Drake's Lil Drizzy a new lease on life as he's sitting in that chair and dying to touch and hold the booty. His reaction to her skillful lap dance, at the very least, is pretty funny.

Director Hype Williams features Azalea and Lopez alone in the video, mostly in black and white, in dark, small and wet corridors with no decor. Lopez is seen popping her gum, playing with a cigarette in her mouth. They're both soaked, with Surfbort-ready hair, and in white wet clothes, to class up the joint.

These are both videos with beautiful women in mostly-undress. Yes, they both conform to tried/tired music industry's standard to sexualize its female stars, and particularly their women of color. At first glance, these are extremely similar in lock-eyes with the male gaze (though lyrically, they're miles apart). The slapping of each other's butts, twerking, the explicit girl-on-girl performing for the sake of the viewer (although, I've already mentioned the first-person and third person POV switcheroos, lyrically)…

Azalea and Lopez' performances, out of the context of their own songs, would be fungible with many other pop/R&B/hip-hop videos. It's generic. We don't even know Lopez' stake in this song since she's not even really lip-syncing.

Nicki has Nicki all over it. And Nicki's song and video is about straight-up f*ckin'. I can't even say “love-making” or “sex” here because it'd seem to miss the point. It is raunchy and pointed at the pointy parts. She has feelings about your banana and would like to share it with you, in word and deed. And then there's choreography somewhere in the mix too, I don't know how or why, I passed out a few times so I can't say for sure.

Lopez — world-class dancer — doesn't really dance here. It's sexy, but I thought this was about booties on the dance floor and now I want my money back. They both have the stalking-cat-floor-move, however.

Nicki Minaj and her troupe twerk to a rap song you can dance to, sampling one of the best-known fat butt anthems slash rap songs of all time. Jennifer Lopez and Azalea twerk to a dance song with a rap verse in it.

There's a connecting-of-the-dots between hip-hop and twerking; historical white co-option of the black artform; and the musical diaspora in which we live in 2013/2014. A lot of that conversation occurred when the term “twerk” became known to your mom, courtesy of Miley Cyrus and her mid-tempo dance-pop song “We Can't Stop,” which featured her black dancers cordoned off from the white party. Disassociating dancing from a culture of origin still plays as naive now (which is part of the reason Taylor Swift's usage of various dance crews in “Shake It Off” was particularly EFFECTIVE, but I digress). Azalea, who is white and from Australia, has already taken heat for her own adoption of a practiced Southern rap drawl which makes her and Lopez' “Booty” a little harder to watch — when normally it's been so darned easy to watch butts!

I don't think “Anaconda” is a perfect video, it's got its problems. It also works on a couple of differnet levels — I think it knows the field it's playing on, and gives it all a real good game. Jennifer Lopez also knows that game, too, and even actively rolled her eyes at it in “I Luh Ya Papi,” mocking the male dominated brainstorming sesh at record labels that scheme to litter every video with half-naked women doing all the twerk work. But here she is, playing along again, with a song and video that doesn't even dare to be strong.

Check out an analysis of recent “thick girl” anthems — including Meghan Trainor's “All About That Bass” — for more on big booties and music videos.

Whereas Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” was a (fart-filled) tribute to everything great about the booty, Mastodon turned the butt into a symbol of horror, or something, in their “The Motherload” music video. I’m not actually sure what’s going on, but I do know it’s horrifying, like something Nine Inch Nails would have done in the early 1990s. That’s not a knock on Mastodon — all hail the metal band who can find a way to get rump-shaking in their music videos. Could use more dragon-plant monsters, though.

Reprise Records

I'm speechless. I have no speech. So I'm just gonna write about this crazy new Mastodon video, which reimagines the Adam and Eve story through an Instagram filter and then mashes it up with some serious, serious twerking action. Like, next-level twerking, you guys. In slow motion. Look at this.

I have to be honest, I don't know Mastodon well at all, but this song and video are blowing my mind. Question is: what is the subtext here? Is there subtext? Is it possible to see the subtext past all that incredible booty-shaking? Is this whole entire video merely a desperate play for attention in an increasingly fractured music scene? For now, I'm not even going to try to understand. I'm just going to watch the “Motherload” video again and again and again until my head explodes in a frightening display of heavy metal ecstasy.

Meanwhile, Mastodon's latest album “Once More 'Round the Sun” is available for purchase now (check out the band's upcoming tour dates further down the page). Needless to say, it comes with my whole-hearted recommendation.

Tour dates:

10-04 Louisville, KY – Champions Park *
10-15 Boise, ID – Revolution *
10-16 Reno, NV – Grand Sierra Casino *
10-17 Pomona, CA – Fox Theater *
10-18 Phoenix, AZ – Marquee Theater *
10-20 Austin, TX – Stubb”s *
10-21 Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom *
10-22 Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater *
10-23 Madison, WI – Orpheum Theatre * 
10-24 Detroit, MI – Fillmore *
10-25 Fort Wayne, IN – Piere's
10-28 Portland, ME – State Theatre *
10-29 Montreal, Quebec – Metropolis *
10-30 Providence, RI – Lupo”s *
10-31 Huntington, NY – Paramount Theater *
11-01 Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom *
11-02 Stroudsburg, PA – Sherman Theater *
11-04 Baltimore, MD – Ram”s Head Live *
11-05 Knoxville, TN – International *
11-06 Nashville, TN – Marathon Music Works *
11-07 Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle *
11-08 Orlando, FL – Kink Festival *
11-19 Dublin, Ireland – Academy @
11-20 Belfast, Northern Ireland – Limelight @
11-22 Southampton, England – O2 Guildhall @
11-24 Manchester, England – O2 Academy @
11-25 Newcastle, England – O2 Academy @
11-26 Glasgow, Scotland – O2 Academy @
11-28 London, England – Brixton O2 Brixton Academy @
11-29 Birmingham, England – O2 Academy @
12-01 Nottingham, England – Rock City @
12-02 Bristol, England – O2 Academy @
12-04 The Hague, Netherlands – Paard Van Troje @
12-05 Torhout, Belgium – De Mast @
12-07 Madrid, Spain – La Riviera @
12-08 Barcelona, Spain – Razzmatazz @
12-10 Milan, Italy – Fabrique @
12-11 Pratteln, Switzerland – Konzertfabrik Z7 @
12-12 Munchen, Germany – Backstage @
12-13 Dortmund, Germany – FZW/Freizeitzentrum West @
12-15 Vesterbro, Denmark – Store Vega 
12-16 Oslo, Norway – Sentrum Scene 
12-17 Stockholm, Sweden – Fryshuset 
12-19 Helsinki, Finland – The Circus 

* with Gojira & Kvelertak  
@ with Big Business, Krokodil

Social media sensation Jessica Vanessa is a 22-year-old “professional twerker” from the fail state of Florida. Formerly, Jessica was a teaching assistant before she realized she can make big bucks by twerking for the Vine.

With two million social media followers Jessica — her Vine username is JessicaVanessa — is a huge hit because apparently people like watching twerkers twerk. Her popularity makes her a hit with advertisers and it’s through those advertisers she’s able to make a living off of her six-second twerking clips that her creepy-looking brother shoots.

Here are some quotes to read while you mark that Sallie Mae email as “spam.”

What I make in six seconds, would take me like four months to make as a pre-K teacher at work. I don’t necessarily want to say my income, but I can tell you this: I bought a new car, paid it off in full, and I was able to get out of debt from my school that I graduated from.

Either I make money doing these videos or I’m going to be broke and jobless. Once I quit, thank god, all these opportunities, outta nowhere for some reason, just ran into my face. ‘Hey, we want you here. We want you there. Come travel here. Come travel there. We’re gonna offer you this much money and this much money.’ It was so much to take in.

I don’t necessarily miss being a Pre-K teacher. I do miss the people that I used to work with, as well as my old kids. But I never enjoyed working 9-5, 12-7. 2-7, however many hours it took, just because I always liked to entertain people. As a little girl, I always wanted to be somebody big. I always wanted to entertain people.

Dreams do indeed come true.

[Daily Mail]

Instagram’s Shaaarlettem is proving that you don’t have to be a gifted twerker, ala Jessica Vanessa, to be instafamous for twerking.

If you’ve checked in on any of your social media networks recently, then you’ve probably seen clips of a portly and confident chick flawlessly twerking in her undies while making you wish she was your baby mama.

That chick is 20-year-old Rashara McGill.

In as little as two weeks, Rashara has gone from being a virtually unknown Californian to a bona fide social media star. With over 130,000 followers, everyone from Snoop to Jermaine Dupri to Slim Thug can’t enough of this chick’s cringeworthy/hilarious dance videos.

I thought Shaaarlettem was a “special needs” child who didn’t know any better at first. But judging from her famous followers and the ads on her page, clearly Twerk Game Ice JJ Fish knows exactly what she’s doing. Throw that lower back in a circle and get ya money, girl!

Children, throw away them booty shorts because twerking is no longer the move to record yourself doing in your messy bedroom.

Cultural ambassador Miley Cyrus has proclaimed twerking to be a thing of the past and is now touting a strange new dance called, “The Nae Nae” as the new hotness to do if you want to sit at the cool kids’ table.

Via her interview with an Australian morning show recently:

“I’m glad you know that [twerking is so yesterday] because some people are living in the past. [The new dance] is called “The Nae Nae.”

“I keep trying to start it at all my shows and no one’s really doing it back at me, so…I just don’t think it’s made its way to Australia yet.

“I don’t really know [the origin]. Just my dancers, the LA Bakers, they taught it to me. They just started doing it, and I’m like, “What is that?” So then I started doing it, which is kinda what happened with the twerking, too.”

Here’s a gif of her doing it to help you practice. I haven’t gotten it all the way down pat yet, but I hope to master the exciting new move in time for the company Christmas party. *crosses fingers*

I take my job as curator of all things Lana very seriously. So it’s essential that whenever someone finds a random pre-WWE video, it gets brought to my attention. Most recently, Twitter user and wrestling bud Tarek Lababidi made sure to show me this video.

It’s a cover of Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun” performed by Kelley Jakle and really it’s insane. There are guys with lots of junk flapping about. A motley crew of singers and Lana doing…things. She’s mostly dancing and goofing around but we get some grade-A twerking around the 1:30 mark. Which is weird because I thought Miley Cyrus invented twerking a few months ago and this is from 2013. Odd.

Anyway. My toes. I still can’t feel them.

TWITTER

Our two favorite people who also happen to voice a cocaine fiend and a doctor with a very healthy obsession with Rush and tentacle porn on an animated series on FX, Archer‘s Amber Nash and Lucky Yates, hosted a Reddit AMA yesterday. They answered questions about…

Slipping into their characters’ voices

Lucky: “I’m basically using my actual voice for Krieger, so…”

Things we should look forward to in the new season

Amber: “I’m super stoked that there is an episode where we go back to Poovey Farms for Pam’s sister Edie’s wedding, they hate each other and it’s hilarious and Edie is played by Allison Tolman from Fargo!”

Their lives changing since the show became super popular

Lucky: “I get to do a lot of cool stuff like cons and award shows and I don’t have any debt.”

Amber: “The great part about being a voice actor is that my life hasn’t changed all that much except in good ways like I have health insurance and my incidents of eating crackers for dinner have greatly diminished. I still get to live in Atlanta and do shows at Dad’s Garage every weekend!”

Secret talents

Lucky: “My face acting.”

Amber: “My butt acting.”

If she doesn’t win the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Butt Actress, I’m going to be pissed.

Joe Fauria is a dancing machine. The Detroit Lions TE caught his first touchdown of the year and celebrated with what I can only describe as a Nicki Minaj-esque booty poop. SO. MUCH. NSFW.

FOX

WWE.com

It seems like Jim Ross highlight calls are dubbed over everything these days. Basically Worldstar Hip-Hop is basically a breeding ground for Jim Ross audio. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before Jim Ross’ voice was used for these Jamaican daggering videos. So when a friend of mine shared it on Facebook I felt the need to pay it forward.

Don’t know what daggering is? Good. You’re in for a twerked out treat. It’s basically guys banging women on the dance floor in creative, disturbing and testicle-crunching ways. So, yeah, this is a thing. It’s probably the end of the rabbit hole of Jim Ross videos, so let’s enjoy this curtain call.

What is this woman doing?

I have no idea.

How drunk is too drunk?

That’s a good question.

Did she do the “dirty bird” dance?

Yes she did.

Is this the first time anyone has twerked to a U2 song?

Probably.

Is she wearing leather pants?

Maybe.

Is this someone’s mom?

God I hope not.

The Falcons lost the game to the Panthers, 34-3. They are not going to the playoffs.

[Pro Football Zone]

Over the last two weeks or so, a few of us have been having a pointless debate in the UPROXX forbidden lair about which of these Vines is better – this bird that squawks with Collective Soul’s “Shine” or the boss dog that takes this dude’s license plate. Now there’s a new entry in the competition for the world’s greatest Vine, because this girl twerking herself right out of a moving car has been open on my monitor for about three hours.

If you’re the type of person who is worried about the well-being of a random stranger who bounced her ass out of an automobile at minor speeds, don’t lose sleep tonight. Her friend says that this new Internet star is just fine and only a “little ashy.” Thank God for the little miracles.

(H/T to the Daily Dot)