of recent origin YORK -- Not every ...

of recent origin YORK -- Not every idea has to be smart to make it forward TV. Sometimes stupid works, too.

At the [i]finale[/i] of busy days in his modern York production office, Tad gentle will sometimes crank the music high-sounding for his staff to take a dance break. single day someone observed, "How hilarious would this be if we did this in the nude?"

From that offhand remark came "Pants-Off Dance-Off," which has quickly become the Fuse network's in the greatest degree popular series ever. No more complicated than its title, the competition features clan dancing in front of a protection playing their favorite music video -- while slowly shedding clothes.

"Why hasn't anybody present naked people and rock music together forward television before?" said Low, who created the "Pop-Up Videos" series for VH1 "It appear to bes so obvious, like peanut butter and jelly"

Five dancers are featured in each exhibit to at 9 p.m. Tuesday from one side Friday, and viewers vote online for each night's favorite. Those choices then cope in Saturday's "dance-off." The series is in repeats now until the inferior season starts Sept. 26.

formerly Low came up with the idea, he persuaded his girlfriend's friend to dance in fore-rank of a screen in his office in such a manner he could film a pilot episode.

"I was thinking, 'What is happening here? What has gone forward with my life that I'm sitting here behind a camera directing a woman to banish her clothes?' But when I place it together in the edit compass it was one of those twinkling of an eyes where you say, 'This is in the same manner funny and mesmerizing.' "

Don't wait for models or strip club refugee soft purposely sought ordinary folks, men and women as a way of striking public against airbrushed culture. The designs have included a 58-year-old retired male teacher and a woman prepareed in a clown suit.

Pop-up factoids appear upon the screen during the dance ("As a child, Masta Wong wanted to be a subway conductor") along with notes from host Jodie Sweetin.

Catherine Mullen Fuse's fresh general manager, recalled finding the pilot originally titled "Dance Without Pants" hilarious, moreover admitted to many doubts about for what cause it should be done.

"We didn't want it to be predictable," she said. "We didn't want to make it salacious. We didn't want it to be 'College Girls Gone Wild.' We wanted to make it like 'The Gong Show' "

After she saw the pilot in February, the display debuted on Fuse in April -- a ridiculously short period in television. It has given the 3-year-old network a buzzworthy program, something it has lacked in trying to appear from the large shadow of MTV and its siblings.

Fuse doesn't sham "Pants-Off Dance-Off" is anything more than it is. After TV Guide called it the "dumbest exhibit to on television," Fuse proudly blazoned that quote in the headline of a freshs release.

The "pants-off" part of the point out is a bit of a tease. When the clothes are finally on the farther side Fuse covers up the bodies with an electronic version of a towel. Viewers who want to descry more are directed to the network's Web site, where breasts and genitalia are pixelated. The conservative approach has annoyed near fans.

Howard Wong a 33-year-old computer worker from recent York City, saw an item in a nudist's magazine about the exhibit to He had piled up an $200 in parking tickets, for a like reason the opportunity to earn $200 to dance for an rayless TV network appealed to him.

"I didn't know what to say or what to do," he said. "I just went with it. It was a total adrenaline rush. I knew I had made a total nincompoop of myself. The whole thing was absurd, unless I think the creator of the exhibit knew that."

Maybe it was his androgynous dance cast or the washboard abdominals, on the other hand Wong -- who uses the name Masta Wong -- became a three-time champion.

Wong briefly worked in California as a photographer shooting pornographic videos. Now he's getting recognized in succession the street for his time exhausted stripping in front of the camera.

"I'm not going to lie," he said. "It is kind of cool"

And it's Low's belief with "Pants-Off Dance-Off" that ordinary the community can be more interesting to watch than the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world.

"Who hasn't danced around in their underwear to their favorite song?" he said. "It's united of life's moments of unbridled enthusiasm, and the notion of this exhibit to is to make that contagious."

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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