"You're an angry dancer. I'm the same way."
— Fred Astaire (to Michael Jackson)
A person gets angry and then dances in order to express that anger. Rarely played seriously, as breakdancing and doing the Carlton to show you're angry is not generally considered a very threatening approach.
A Dance Battler takes this trope to a logical conclusion, by beating people to death while grooving. If a sizable number of a Proud Warrior Race are doing this, it is likely a War Dance they're doing to hype themselves up into battle.
See also Angry Mob Song, Hair Metal, Nerdcore, "Risky Business" Dance.
Contrast with Happy Dance and Mating Dance. Compare Dance of Despair and Working Out Their Emotions.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Mashiro in Engaged to the Unidentified does an angry dance here
.
Comic Books
- In Hate, Buddy and Valerie are at a party after one of their bigger fights, and the drunker she gets, the more out of control she gets, and eventually she starts dancing:
"C'mon, you faggots! I'll dance with anyone who's name isn't Buddy Bradley!"
Films — Animation
- In Happy Feet, Mumble angry-dances at Gloria when they have their lover's quarrel. Bonus points for scuffing snow at her.
Films — Live-Action
- Footloose's warehouse sequence.
- Hot Rod parodies the sequence from Footloose.
- Hedwig and the Angry Inch. That's enough anger for several inches.
- In The Breakfast Club, Andrew does this. Oddly enough, it's his reaction to getting stoned.
- Sunday School Musical, where the main character gets bad news and goes to the roof to briefly dance around all mad.
- In Dil To Pagal Hai, a Bollywood movie, the Unlucky Childhood Friend dances in anger. It was called the "Dance of Envy".
- The Bring It On series, most specifically, the "Krumping" from Bring It On: All or Nothing.
- Billy Elliot managed to actually pull this trope off well, in the scene where he's angry-tapdancing to "A Town Called Malice" by the Jam.
- High School Musical:
- Zac Efron with "Bet on It", from High School Musical 2, one of the most Narmtastic scenes of all time.
- He may have topped that one with the third movie's absolutely ridiculous "Scream".
- One of the last scenes of Swing Kids has Robert Sean Leonard doing one of these.
- The Popeye movie has Bluto doing this, singing about how mean he is, and tearing down the Oyl family house all at once.
- In Once Were Warriors "Boogie Heke" does a Haka in a very powerful scene.
- In Beasts of No Nation, the Commandant psyches up his Child Soldiers to throw themselves into heavy fire by leading then in a war song and dance.
- Tina's dance in the opening scene of Do the Right Thing. The sequence is obviously meant to illustrate the anger in the community, the theme of "fighting" in the song, and the racially-motivated hatred on all sides in the neighborhood.
Literature
- In the Noddy books, this happens whenever Noddy gets extremely angry or sad. He would start angrily stamping around his house while singing a song called "Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!". This song was used in the 1950s audio reading by the author and 1971 and 1972 audio adaptation.
Stamp, stamp stamp,
Stamp, stamp, stamp
I'm feeling sad today, I can't go out to play!
Stamp, stamp, stamp
Stamp, stamp, stamp
Stamp, stamp, stamp
Stamp, stamp, stamp
I'm a missy little Noddy, I'm not loved by anybody.
Stamp, stamp, stamp
Stamp, stamp, stamp - Touching Spirit Bear: At one point, Cole performs the dance of anger, but not because he was particularly angry. He just had to do a dance every day, and the dance of anger was a very special dance that portrayed how he once felt.
Live-Action TV
- "Bret's Angry Dance" from Flight of the Conchords. This song is instrumental, and is played when Bret starts dancing to vent his anger on being fired from the band. The dance closely follows the style of Kevin Bacon's angry dance in Footloose.
- On 30 Rock, Liz suggests that a former classmate is gay at a class reunion. He replies by saying "I'm so mad all I can do is dance," and begins to do so.
- Peep Show: "Great. Now I'm getting an angry lap dance."
- Mad Men: Ken (of all people) does an angry tapdance◊ in the "The Crash" episode. He has the cane because he hurt his foot in a car crash caused by SCDP's client, and he's hopped up on some kind of drugs given to the whole office by a Dr. Feelgood type of guy, so he is not brimming with the milk of human kindness, but after all, IT'S HIS JOB!
- Subverted in Bunheads. Sasha has a dream sequence in which she expresses her anger towards her parents constant fighting and their emotional neglect of her in a dark and sensual dance but it's set to the light bouncy tune and silly lyrics of the They Might Be Giants version of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".
- Lampshaded in Ally McBeal when John gets furious at Nelle for being a snobby Rich Bitch. He dances frantically in his office and Richard comes in. He points out to John that it's his Angry Dance. John replies that HE'S ANGRY!
- In Pretty Little Liars Hanna pulls off one while prepping for the talent portion of a pagent. She was supposed to demostrate her skill to her coach, but instead she loses it in a Narm fit of rage crumping. Only barely Makes Sense In Context.
- Mike Chang has one in Glee after his father forbids him from participating in the school production of West Side Story, and from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional dancer.
- Barry in The Goldbergs suggests that Erica do one like on Footloose, even though she complains that there's no such thing as angry dancing. He procedes to demonstrate by recreating Kevin Bacon's warehouse dance in the school gym.
- Parodied by Josh Chan's Angry Mad dance (and "song") in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
Music Videos
- Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield", starting here.
- Madonna's video for "Human Nature".
- Michael Jackson: Virtually every music video since Billie Jean.
- The infamous "Panther Ending" from Black or White.
- Played straight in Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself", in which a couple's passive-aggressive fighting over tiny things—hogging the blanket, making the bed, one closing the refrigerator just as the other tries to look in it—is elaborately choreographed.
Myths & Religion
- Happens a lot in Hindu Mythology. The God Shiva, who is both the Destroyer God and the God of Dance, danced a spectacularly angry dance, called Rudra Tandava, when his wife Sati immolated herself. It did not end too well for her tormentors.
Puppet Shows
- Ironically, Barney & Friends.
Theater
- Billy Elliot has an Act 1 Finale entitled "Angry Dance".
- In Follies, Buddy goes into an angry dance twice in "The Right Girl."
- The Waltz for Eva and Che in Evita
- Curiously not present in Footloose.
Video Games
- Michael Jackson seemed to do this a lot, in his music videos mentioned above, but most specifically in his video game, where he can defeat Mooks with his "Dance Magic".
- In Pizza Tower, when having a 50x Combo Peppino's default idle animation becomes a spastic dance◊ and his walking animation turns into Moe Syzlak's "Funk Dancing for Self-Defense"◊. During the final boss, when the boss forces him to go through a Boss Rush he becomes so utterly furious that he's stuck in this animation for the rest of the fight.
Web Animation
- GoAnimate: Characters tend to do this a lot when they throw tantrums.
Western Animation
- Wakfu: In "The Magnificent Five", the Bullies (minotaur-like brutes) start a dance clearly reminiscent of a Haka before charging.
- Bob's Burgers:
- In "God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins", Bob freaks out their deranged house guest when he tells him that he was never a mannequin, and the mannequin he loves is probably in a dump somewhere. Linda is furious at Bob.
Linda: Oh, I'm so mad I could stomp!
Gene: Do it, Mom! Do the stompy dance! She's doing it! - In "Easy Commercial, Easy Go-Mercial", the kids start angrily doing the Can-Can to spite their dad for almost completely cutting the rest of the family out of the big Super Bowl commercial they did for the restaurant. Then Linda starts doing it too, and even Bob gets caught up in the moment until he gets a cramp.
- In "God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins", Bob freaks out their deranged house guest when he tells him that he was never a mannequin, and the mannequin he loves is probably in a dump somewhere. Linda is furious at Bob.
- Gravity Falls: In "Boyz Crazy", the Sev'ral Timez are a batch of genetically engineered clones created for the purpose of being the perfect boy band. When Mabel demands that her friends be removed from the premises, the clones throw them out of her room by dancing aggressively and causing them to back out of the doorway.
- Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: In "Daniel Can't Ride Trolley; Daniel Can't Get What He Wants", the characters use a strategy where they stomp their feet three times when they get angry.
- Invader Zim has one instance where Gir tells Gaz he will only do a favor for her if she dances. She refuses at first, but eventually cracks and does an angry stomp type of dance.
Real Life
- The Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, have the Haka, famously used by the "All Blacks" rugby union team before each game. Not a literal war dance, as is often supposed: Māori culture has a specific haka for everything from weddings and funerals to welcoming foreign envoys. The All-Blacks actually have two separate hakas, one traditional one that's much older than the team or even the sport ("Ka Mate," composed around 1820 by Te Rauparaha, chieftain of the Ngāti Toa tribenote ) and a somewhat longer one that was composed especially for the team.
- The Hawaii [Rainbow] Warriors, football team of the University of Hawaii, do a Haka before games, as do several other American college football teams with significant numbers of Pacific Islander players.
