When Matt Harding sets up his video camera and asks strangers to dance with him, there’s no music. No tempo, no beat. Just his signature jig, a few faint finger snaps, and the sounds in your own head. It makes for a hysterical experience and a wonderfully infectious scene on video.

I know this first hand because Matt came by to dance here at Yahoo!. If you’ve never heard of Matt, go check out wherethehellismatt.com. He traveled to 42 countries in 14 months to make his most recent video, “Dancing 2008,” which has been viewed more than 8.5 million times since he posted it in June. His scenery included a tulip field in the Netherlands, the DMZ in Korea, the “Painted Ladies” in San Francisco, children in Yemen, Bollywood-style dancers in India, bushmen in New Guinea, and free spirits in Paris.

I emailed Matt on a lark, with an invitation to come do a video with Yahoos in Sunnyvale. What you see here is the effect of one incredibly willing Internet phenomenon, as I dragged him hither and yon across our campus to shoot 33 scenes in less than seven hours. This video closed a recent company all-hands meeting — webcast to 14,000 employees worldwide — as a reminder that, in spite of the extraordinary events of last seven months, this is still one helluva great company.

You can download the song “Praan” (Bengali for “life”) at Amazon. It was composed by Garry Schyman and that incredible voice belongs to 17-year-old Palbasha Siddique of Minneapolis.

Thanks for the dance, Matt.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor