Boogie Knights

We dance well here in Camelot.

We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance whene'er we're able
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.

— Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Dancing in a suit of armour. An amusing sight, in part due to the inherent clumsiness and difficulty in moving glibly in such attire, though far less so than one might expect, as the Real Life section would suggest. Furthermore, a suit of armor has connotations of knightly bravery and honor — hence the humorous whiplash stemming from dancing in full plate (see also The Comically Serious).

Subtrope of Bathos.

Not to be confused with Dance Battler (someone who fights using dance moves, as opposed to someone who dances while dressed for battle), although they can obviously have plenty of crossover. The title is also a Pun on the 1997 film Boogie Nights.

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Examples:

Animation

• In one of the episodes of Nu, Pogodi! (in a museum), Wolf disguises himself as a suit of armor and soon afterwards slides across a slippery floor, doing figure skating maneouvers to the tune of a classical melody.

Anime & Manga

• Tiger & Bunny: While not a straight example, you get the idea that the CGI animators were getting a kick out of putting hero-suited Wild Tiger, and any of the heroes in gag mode in as many odd poses as they could come up with.

Card Games

• Knight of the Hokey Pokey, from the Unglued joke set of Magic: The Gathering.

Films — Live-Action

• In Descendants 3, the "Night Falls" musical sequence features the main cast fighting enchanted suits of armor. Mal counters by casting a spell of her own that forces the armor to dance uncontrollably until they all collapse.
• The end of Ella Enchanted sees the armored castle guards dance along to the Crowd Song (since they never even speak, let alone sing).
• Iron Man 2: Tony Stark, drunk as hell, fully suited up in Iron Man armor. And it's one of the most hilarious moments in the movie.
• The "Knights of the Round Table" song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• The original version of The Pink Panther includes a costume party in which Inspector Clouseau attempts to remain incognito wearing a suit of armour, complete with clanging faceplate. He spends some of the evening dancing.
• This behind-the-scenes clip from the set of Predator 2 is dripping with this trope.
• Not dancing per se, but the Mel Brooks movie Silent Movie has a hilarious scene where the main characters, in full plate armor, try to eat lunch at a cafeteria.
• In The Three Stooges short "Squareheads of the Round Table", Larry, Moe, and Shemp noisily dance in full armor to an "ancient" radio playing "Swanee River".

Live-Action TV

• Brainiac: Science Abuse: In the spin-off Brainiac: History Abuse, a Once per Episode segment involved a knight in full armor trying to impress a group of maidens by performing a classic disco dance.
• Britain's Got Talent:
  • One contestant did a Michael Jackson dance dressed as Darth Vader.
  • Another time on BGT, the dance team "Boogie Storm", consisting of dancers dressed as Stormtroopers, received the Golden Buzzer from Simon Cowell.
• Being a medieval musical comedy, Galavant has dancing knights in the very first episode (during "She'll Be Mine").
• In MythBusters, Adam Savage sometimes dances in their fire suit. He also takes the opportunity to dance in the Redman suit, the heavier impact armor, and the prop armor that shows up for historical myths.
• Super Sentai:
  • Tokumei Sentai Go Busters features the Red Buster's Humongous Mecha dancing to the ending song.
  • Predated by Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger, where a bored Yabaiba (no, it's not For the Evulz) holds Tetomu hostage so the Gaorangers would make Gao King dance.
  • And Chouriki Sentai Ohranger predates both of them, as Ohranger Robo and Red Puncher both danced together, the former to see how the repairs had progressed after it got wrecked, the latter to help improve OhRed's coordination with the controls.
• Canadian comedy duo Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster once had a TV special that parodied fairy tales — they star as a court jester and royal physician, breaking into an impromptu softshoe dance in the dining hall, followed by a knight in armor doing a more vigorous tapdance.
  "That's not softshoe, that's heavy metal!"
  "My mom told be there'd be knights like this..."

Music

• Adam Ant dances in a very shiny suit of armor in "Ant Rap".
• The band Grail Knights are a band that plays power metal, dressed as a hybrid between superheroes and knights. While "dancing" is a bit of a stretch, there's still headbanging and horn-throwing involved.
• A very non-humorous example is Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights".

Theatre

• Spamalot, inspired by the Camelot scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Robin would rather sing and dance than fight, and eventually pursues a career in musical theater. Lancelot, a Straight Gay, is also revealed as loving to dance.

Video Games

• One staff in Dark Souls allows player-characters to perform a ritual dance with it. Some people only invade others to perform this dance at them and disappear.
• In Final Fantasy IV for the DS, there is an Easter Egg where Cecil does a dance. With an (E-rated) exotic dancer. It's absolutely hilarious.
• The Mass Effect games allow the protagonist some dance steps in full combat gear.
• In RuneScape, if you pay some money and pull a lever at the party room (formerly in Camelot), a group of knights dance and sing on a table. Probably inspired by the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene. Also, there are multiple dance emotes, which players can do in full armor.
• In The Sims Medieval, when a musician plays a lute, most people in the room start to dance; this includes any knights in full armor, and occasionally even golems.
• There are all-class dancing taunts in Team Fortress 2, and several cosmetic items are suits of armor for the various classes. Pyro gets the most mileage out of this, having both a samurai's armor and helmet as well as a full black knight ensemble to dance in, while also being technically armored already in his fireproof suit (which can also have variations as a hazmat/radiation suit).
• World of Warcraft. The dance command is never affected by whatever your character is equipped with.

Virtual Reality

• Epic Medival Battle is a dance battle.

Web Animation

• A fan-made video of Dark Souls contains characters in various different full-body armours dancing to "Take on Me" by a-ha.

Webcomics

• The "Dancing Knights" spell in The Order of the Stick, a pun on the dancing lights spell found in Dungeons & Dragons.

Real Life

• Longsword instructor Guy Windsor once explained the versatility of armour by stating that an armoured knight can "run, jump, ride and even dance techno. I have seen this with my own eyes." The popularity of any type of armour has, though all of history, been very heavily influenced by how much mobility the wearer retains while protected from harm. A well-fitted full plate harness will barely impede a fit wearer at all.
• Historically, it wasn't unknown for squires to dance in full harness as part of their training. Seeing how they had to be able to crawl up the underside of a siege ladder and mount a horse in full gallop while wearing all their armor to be considered for knighthood, this was only the beginning. Demonstrated here with a modern replica of 15th-century plate armour.

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"Oh, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."

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