This video, uploaded to YouTube on February 26, 2012, is of a Russian ‘flash mob’ putting together a massive dance number on a Moscow street.

The song is Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On The Ritz”, written in 1929 and intended to satirize the less well-off dressing-up ‘to the nines’.

So … You’ve got a Russian Flash mob dancing to a song written by a Russian-American Jewish Composer, originally observing the working class trying to emulate the rich.

As with so many things, the media (Russian media, in this case) are debating whether the performance had a deeper sociopolitical meaning: “Puttin'”? Putin? Good Putin policy? Bad Putin policy?

Or is a dance sometimes just a dance?

Watch it here.

PS: If someone could give me a good English translation of the original Russian title, I’d be much obliged.