A Rain Dance is a ceremonial religious dance performed by people (usually aboriginal) who want to appeal to God/the gods to make it rain. Although it is commonly seen as a Native American device, rain dances have been practiced since Ancient Egyptian times. Rain Dances have been seen as recently as the 20th century in the Balkans.
According to That Other Wiki, the Native American version was actually another dance altogether, that got its name changed for political reasons
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Probably close to a Dead Horse Trope, in fiction it is used almost exclusively for laughs. The (non-believing) characters dance, sometimes in full-feathered headdress, and... something other than rainfall happens. Sometimes the characters will look at a "step chart" after such a failure and remark, "Oh, wait, that was the ______ dance!"
And no, this doesn't allude to Singin' in the Rain! If they succeed, Happy Rain ensues. May be followed by a Redemption in the Rain shot, or possibly Battle in the Rain. One comedic result can be a Personal Raincloud.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Used in an old Hamm's Beer commercial (which is probably now politically incorrect). Watch two here, with Personal Rain Cloud results.
Anime and Manga
- Played with in Soul Eater, when Spirit does a rain dance outside his daughter's apartment window in order to give her luck on her exams. He obviously has no idea what he is doing, however, dancing around a bucket with lit candles duct-taped to his head.
Asian Animation
- In Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Sports are Fun episode 15, the gang is in a dry desert and can't have a dragon boat race as a result. To solve this problem, Wolffy does a rain dance; it doesn't work, with the one cloud that appears afterwards producing nothing.
Comic Books
- In one Lucky Luke strip, an area inhabited by Native Americans is suffering from serious drought. As it turns out, their shaman has fallen from a horse and hit his head. He is otherwise OK, but can't get the dance right and his various attempts only produce minor weather anomalies (like a small blizzard after he does the macarena).
- In another, a group of irate native dignitaries enters the local saloon to deliver an angry message to the townspeople. These include their shaman... and his unruly apprentice, who is far more interested in the saloon girls than their mission, and decides to start dancing on the stage. Afterwards, it starts raining in the girls' dressing-room.
Comic Strips
- In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin attempts a snow dance to get school canceled. (It doesn't work.)
- Parodied in one The Far Side cartoon where the Indian chief is consulting a book called "101 Rain Dances" to figure out what the hell kind of dance he was doing ... while it's raining eggbeaters. The PreHistory of The Far Side also includes a rough draft of this cartoon which instead depicts an "Early American Cow Dance."
- In FoxTrot, Jason and Marcus once did a snow dance. Paige joined them in the hope that school might be canceled if it worked.
Films — Animated
- Rango. The Water Dance is basically this, as the townsfolk of Dirt make a Cargo Cult appeal for water to come out of a pipe faucet. It's actually somewhat creepy.
Films — Live-Action
- Chief Red Crow teaches the Indian Guides how to do one in Man of the House (1995). Ben is initially skeptical, claiming that "this is Seattle", to which Red Crow immediately replies "Ah, but who do you think brings all the rain?"
- Early in The Snake Prince, a group of Hmong tribespeople are shown performing a dance ritual to put an end to the drought plaguing their village. It doesn't work.
Literature
- In The Dresden Files, Injun Joe does this as a weapon against a shapeshifter, since running water will cancel out magic.note
- In Claudius the God, a Roman commander whose troops are lost in the desert follows his native guide's advice to invoke the local rain god. It works.
- In the children's horror anthology Still More Scary Stories for Sleepovers, a Rain Dance causes the Downer Ending in "Night of the Ki-Khwan". Perhaps the only time a Rain Dance was ever played for horror.
Live-Action TV
- How I Met Your Mother has Ted perform Rain Dance as an Overly Long Gag in a desperate attempt to keep Robin from leaving to a company camping trip because she's close to dating her colleague. He did make it rain and it was one of his best Grand Romantic Gestures.
- In Double the Fist, Womp performed a rain dance that summoned... hamburgers.
- The X-Files. In "The Rain King", Daryl Mootz does The Theme Park Version of a rain dance, claiming Magical Native American ancestry. Scully and Mulder are not impressed...until it starts bucketing down out of a clear sky.
- In an episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide a reverse rain dance is performed by Coconut Head and the other boys to get it to be sunny (after several days of rain, and therefore students cooped up indoors).
- The old Truth or Consequences program once had one hapless contestant dress up in full Indian regalia, feather headdress, buckskins, drums, and have him dance about in public supposedly to make it rain; his antics drew a total crowd of one.
- One Saturday Night Live skit had several characters in a restaurant complaining about various inconveniences, and then cutting to a closeup of the guilty party nervously glancing from side-to-side. On the way out, they notice it's suddenly raining when there wasn't a cloud in the sky when they arrived. Cut to an Indian chieftain sitting in a corner booth, nervously shifting his gaze.
- The Goodies do a rain dance with some pretty native girls to drive away the tourists the villainous Nasty Person is trying to bring to the Lost Island of Munga. Somehow it turns into the square dance halfway through. The subsequent storm is a bit too successful and ends up blowing them out to sea on a raft.
- In the fourth UK series of Big Brother, Scottish contestant Cameron spends a few days in the Big Brother house in South Africa. When taking part in a rain dance task, he demonstrates his rain dance, adding that he has different reasons for a rain dance in his continent from theirs.
Music
- Hampton The Hamster. The Hamster Dance is shown to be this in the music video. Everyone's sweltering in the Thirsty Desert until some Personal Rainclouds turn up to watch the dance and start laughing at the sight, causing it to rain.
- The Skrillex and Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley's song "Make It Bun Dem" features in its video clip a Dirty Cop forcefully evicting poor people from their homes so they can be replaced with a huge mall. Among those residents are a Native American teenager and his father (or grandfather), who at first perform the rain dance to ruin the architectural plans of the mall. Before resorting to more extreme measures.
Tabletop Games
- In Deadlands, a shaman who knows the appropriate favour can cause rain, and one way to earn the needed "credit" with the spirits is by dancing.
Video Games
- In the Pokémon series, "Rain Dance" causes it to rain for five turns in battle. This boosts the strength of Water-type moves by 50%, cuts Fire-type moves by 50%, and has a variety of other effects on certain moves and abilities.
- Done by Mumbo in Banjo-Tooie's Cloudcuckooland.
- Toad Man from Mega Man 4 uses his Special Weapon, Rain Flush, by dancing and summoning an unavoidable shower of acid raindrops that covers the whole screen, and the only way to stop it is by attacking him while he's dancing.
- In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Globox has this as an ability that he uses to help Rayman get across the Canopy level. According to the sign next to his cell where he was kept, it was also used to take out several robo-pirates. Eventually, Rayman gets a mask that allows him to do the same thing.
- Pizza Tower has some enemies in the Oregano Desert level do this around totems, which will conjure thunderclouds that Peppino must steer clear from. One Chef Task also requires the player to reactivate a totem via the mach dash.
Web Original
- Pippin does one of these in Deviantart Secret Wars. It results in a Battle in the Rain.
Western Animation
- In the Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales episode "The Rainmakers", Chumley attempts a rain dance indoors, which does nothing. This is, of course, the lead-in to Professor Whoopee's explanation of what really makes rain.
- US Acres, from Garfield and Friends, has Roy buying a robot that will do dances for whatever... rain, snow, buckets of bolts, etc. Explained in the Literal Genie entry.
- In the Donald Duck cartoon Grand Canyonscope, Donald fools around with a genuine raindancing costume and manages to summon a Personal Rain Cloud before the ranger catches him. Note that when Donald dances a traditional dance, nothing happens. But when he switches over to the Charleston... instant rain!
- Alluded to in the Goofy cartoon short How to Dance. A crowd of characters are dancing to tribal drumming music, and it rains on just them, and they all unfurl umbrellas as they continue dancing.
- A bumper series on The Beatles cartoon has the boys mistaking a desert for the beach, and thus dying of thirst. The sand is so hot it has Ringo jumping around wildly and it turns out to be a rain dance that makes it rain. In the last segment, the torrent of rain causes a mammoth flood as Ringo doesn't know how to make it stop.
- In Alpha and Omega, Humphrey attempts a rain dance (and song) to try and STOP rain. Upon being informed of this, he starts singing and dancing in reverse.
- Fraggle Rock The Animated Series: The Fraggles have a dance that they do whenever their water supply gets low. It works because the noise results in the human who's home Fraggle Rock is located under turns on his water spigot whenever he hears the noise, which refills the Fraggles' water supply.
- Scooby-Doo: One episode revolved around the attempted theft of sacred Native American relics. At the end of the episode, Scooby tried putting them on and dancing around, which caused a rain of eggbeaters to fall on him.
- Looney Tunes:
- Sioux Me has a group of generic American Indians singing "Weeeee waaaant rainnnnn" and dancing around. It doesn't work at first, but a helpful traveling salesman and a small Indian boy save the day for them, especially for their shaman, who's been threatened with decapitation by the chief.
- Foghorn Leghorn does this in attempt to trick Egghead Jr. in Crockett-Doodle-Do. Foghorn actually succeeds in getting rain- and lightning struck onto himself.
- In the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner episode Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner, Wile E. does a rain dance in attempt to strike lightning on Road Runner by rigging a lightning rod disguised as a female roadrunner. The lightning instead redirects to the umbrella Wile E. was holding.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In "Camp Keep a Good Mac Down", Bloo practices one. Later, Mac starts a campfire, only to lose it to a downpour.
Bloo: See? My rain dance worked!
- In one Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, Boris needs rain for some reason, so he does a rain dance. That causes clouds to gather, but it doesn't rain. So he does something that is guaranteed to make it rain - he washes his car.
- Yogi Bear: One interstitial segment has Yogi demonstrating a rain dance, which results in lightning striking him on the rear and rain flooding the area.
Yogi: When I'm in good form, I dance up a storm!
