Angry Dance

"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.

Almost always Narm and fabulously so.

A Dance Battler takes this trope to a logical conclusion, by beating people to death while grooving. If a sizable number of a Cargo Cult is doing this, it is likely a War Dance they're doing to hype themselves up into battle.

See also:

• Angry Mob Song
• Hair Metal
• Nerd Core

Contrast with Mating Dance.

Examples of Angry Dance include:

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 overwrought warehouse sequence - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs CO-Yk Dgn Y
  • Hot Rod parodies this sequence.
• 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
• Stomp. Angry Black Men dance about.
• 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 an very powerful scene. Definitely not Narm.

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 Thirty 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."

Music Videos

• Either the Ur Example or the Trope Codifier: Pat Benetar's "Love is a Battlefield".
• Madonna's video for "Human Nature".
• Michael Jackson; the infamous "Panther Ending" from Black or White.

Myths & Religion

• Happens a lot in Hindu Mythology. The God Shiva, who is both the God the Destroyer and the God of Dance, danced a spectacularly angry dance, called Rudra Tandava, when his wife Sati immolated herself. It does not end too well for her tormentors.

Puppet Shows

• Ironically, Barney and Friends.

Theater

• Billy Elliot has an Act 1 Finale entitled "Angry Dance".
• "The Right Girl" in Follies

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".

Western Animation

• Wakfu
  • In season 1 episode 5, the Bullies (minotaur-like brutes) start a dance clearly reminiscent of a Haka before charging.
  • So do the Sadida warriors in season 1 episode 19.

Real Life

• The Maori, the native people of New Zealand, have the War Haka, famously used by the "All Blacks" rugby union team. Yes, they perform a war dance before each game.
  • The Hawaii [Rainbow] Warriors, football team of the University of Hawaii, also do a Haka before games.