Shaun Sperling remembers the exact moment that he fell in love with Madonna.
“It was May 23, 1990,” the 33-year-old Chicago-based attorney behind one of the week’s biggest YouTube hits told the Daily Dot. “Madonna was in Chicago for her Blonde Ambition tour. I was watching a morning show with my mom, and they showed the opening scenes from the tour.
“My mind exploded. I immediately transformed my room to everything Madonna, and since then I’ve always just been obsessed with her.”
The obsession grew to such an unhealthy apex that, when Sperling and his parents were deciding on a theme for his bar mitzvah celebration in 1992, he chose to make everything Madonna. He and his parents would splash the seductive singer and her cone-shaped bras all over the room.
In the middle of the celebration, the DJ stops the party and welcomes in the guest of honor, who sashays to center stage, does a two-part hand twirl, and quick removes his suit coat—revealing a white button-down shirt with an airbrushed portrait of Madonna’s face on the back. The beat to Madonna’s “Vogue” drops and Sperling’s off, lip synching and posturing like a backup dancer on the Who’s That Girl tour.
Sperling’s parents captured the performance on videotape, but it quickly went into the family’s archives, never to be seen again.
Last Friday, while working on preliminary production for a one-man performance he intends to call Madonna and Me, Sperling unearthed the footage, posting it to YouTube under the name “Shaun Sperling Bar Mitzvah Dance—Madonna, Vogue—4/14/92.”
“I’ve had it in my possession for 20 years, and I haven’t showed a soul,” he said. “I was mortified by it.”
Sperling posted the video without telling anybody it existed, but one of his friends found out and sent the video to Perez Hilton.
Now, more than 450,000 people have watched Sperling strut his stuff to Madonna’s “Vogue.”
Best: the recent rush may just be enough to elicit a Volume II.
“I’ve improved my moves since then,” Sperling attested. “It’s only gotten better with age.”
“Express Yourself,” Shaun. Don’t you know you’re causing a commotion?
Photo via YouTube
