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Music

Watching These Elderly Italians Line Dance to Deep House Reminds Us That There's Still Hope in the World

Thanks, DJ Sprinkles.

Terre Thaemlitz is a lot of things—cultural critic, identity theorist, house aficionado, producer of the world's longest album—but until very recently we weren't aware that in addition to all of that, the Japan-based artist really knows how to get a line dance going. Yep, you read that right: DJ Sprinkles has the ability to get crowds going so wild that they can't help but don ten gallon hats and act out their Woolpack fantasies.

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In a video from 2012 that resurfaced recently thank's to Twitter user Fennec, we can clearly see a group of elderly revellers giving it their best Billy Ray Cyrus impression right in front of Thaemlitz's booth. Shot at the Dancity festival in Foligno, the video is more than just a bunch of doddery Italians square dancing to deep house—it's essential proof that for all its horrors, for all its strifes and struggles and disappointments and let downs, life is, in its own strange way, actually…OK.

Perhaps slinking into your own internal safe-space via the medium of grainy footage of grandparental figures shuffling across the dancefloor to the sounds of disjointed deep house isn't the best way to confront the quotidian atrocities that beat and batter each and everyone of us, but fuck it, if you're going to escape into anything, why not make it this. Just for a minute or two, pretend that all that matters is camera-phone footage of Italian OAPs shuffling to Sprinkles. Trump and Brexit will still be there once you've closed the tab. Don't worry about that.

Josh is on Twitter