The Happy Pod: The cafe spreading the joy of dance
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Hello, this is Rosie from Sri Lanka and you're listening to The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and in this edition, the cafe that's got a whole town moving.
Let's get people dancing again and just be joyous because dancing is good for the soul and it makes people happy.
By offering free coffee to anyone who's dancing. A novel way to reuse discarded cigarette butts.
Why hundreds of people in Europe have been dressing as devilish creatures to celebrate the approach of Christmas. And...
I mean, it's fantastic to hear the screams of joy and how much they enjoy it.
Making the ballet more accessible to children from all backgrounds. We start in the US state of Massachusetts, where staff at a coffee shop have been spreading happiness by getting their small town dancing. It all began with an offer of a free drink for anyone who came in doing their favourite moves. A video of the first day went viral and it started a movement across the whole town of Middleborough. Now the community has put on a day of dance with other businesses joining in. Stephanie Prentice spoke to Olivia from the Coffee Milano Cafe.
We love like interacting with our customers and like knowing everybody's name and making everyone feel special. And at first it probably took about an hour for the first person to come in dancing. And then once I think once one person did it, then other people were like, oh, what is what's going on?
So I watched the initial TikTok with is it 7.6 million?
Yes, yes, yes. It's insane. I with my boss and I was when I got 4000 views that morning. I sent him a screenshot and I was like shocked that it had 4,000 views. So the fact now that it's now on TikTok, it's at, I think, 8.2 million. And it's crazy. And I think that it's like people love things that are making other people happy and just spreading joy. And I don't think it's about $3 coffee for free. I think it's just the fact that we are letting people express themselves properly.
Hello people, enjoy the pod!
And I saw an array of dance moves, some pretty impressive ones. Can you tell me what you saw and what your favorites were?
Oh, yeah. So the first person in the video is actually my sister during the moonwalk. And she did not expect that this was going to go viral at all. And she's highly embarrassed that she took her shoes off the moonwalk. And now 8 million people saw that, um, and then we a lot of the other ones were regulars but yeah i love all the other like the different moves that we can see and how different people from different generations dance as well i thought it's cool to see people were inspiring other people to dance for sure um like i know when the group of girls came in and they were all dancing um one gentleman was saw them outside and was like come on in and start dancing and he got them going and then they came in dancing
Yeah, the people's expressions in the video, they actually look so joyful and so childlike.
Yes, everyone is smiling. And that's all that we really wanted was to, you know, make our regulars happy and keep spreading joy.
So have you got any future plans to do maybe a different twist on this? Could people do it with their kids, with their pets?
Yeah, so we actually were talking about that. We were talking about maybe like bring your dogs in and, you know, dance with your dog. Just how we could do various different things to kind of make it more niche and have its own twist on it.
So it seems like you've made your regulars very happy. You've gained a lot of social media followers. What would you say to any... Yes. What would you say to any other businesses thinking about doing this?
I think that it's a great idea. And today we have 15 other businesses in downtown Middleborough also partaking in it. We have an axe store in place that's doing it, antique stores, and the eyeglass store, and the liquor store. Everyone is doing their own little twist on it. And I think that...
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Speakers
23 identified
Oliver Conway 5 min
Olivia from the Coffee Milano Cafe 3 min
Javi Sajdov 3 min
Yusuf Kutaya 2 min
Danny Shrewsbury 1 min
Bradley Shenton 1 min
Narrator at Royal Ballet 1 min
Unnamed Child 1 min
Roji 1 min
Miranda 1 min
Poonam 1 min
Narrator of World of Secrets 1 min
Alex McCormick 1 min
Katie Hazeldine 1 min
Stephanie Prentice 1 min
Kevin O'Hare
Gillian Barker
Meinhard Fauster
Barsha
Caroline Barker
Unnamed Interviewee
Unnamed Person
Unnamed Woman